Hey there, people! Lenny Rudow here for BoatUS Magazine, and today we're going to look at some
basic troubleshooting measures for fishfinders that can save the day if you're out fishing
and that fishfinder starts getting a little glitchy. First, let's start with the super simple
stuff. Whenever your fishfinder won't turn on, or for that matter, any electronic device on a boat
doesn't want to fire up, first things first, give the wires a jiggle. See if you can isolate the
problem. No luck? Next, pull off the connectors and give them a look. These connectors have
little pins inside and sometimes they get bent. They may not seat properly in the unit itself.
Also look in there and make sure there's no green or white crud. If there is,
you're going to have to scrape it off with your fingernail or you might need to get a toothbrush
to clean it out. You want those connectors to be nice and clean.
If the simple fixes don't do the trick, you're going to need to use a test light or
a multimeter — some type of tool to tell if you're getting power up to the unit in the first place.
And of course, part of that means getting underneath the console or behind the helm.
Depends on your boat — that's exactly how you have to do this — and finding the fuses and the
connections underneath the dash. You need to check those all and make sure they're all good too. Make
sure everything is getting power. You may have to trace your positive and negative leads all the way
back to the battery. Whatever, the bottom line is that you have to find the break in the power
and fix it. Now let's switch gears. Let's say your unit is turning on, but it's not reading
bottom at all. Well, on many units, that could simply be the transducer connection,
and often they'll say "no transducer" right on the screen. This unit doesn't, but as you can see, I'm
getting no bottom reading. Well, that's because I pulled the transducer plug. If you ever encounter
this, the first thing you want to do is go to that plug, make sure it's affixed and working properly.
There. Now I'm starting to get a bottom reading. Now let's say, you know your transducer is plugged
in and active because you have a temperature reading on the screen of the fishfinder, but
you're still not reading bottom. What's the deal? Well, in all likelihood, it's an issue
with the transducer itself. They're on breakaway brackets. They're mounted so they can kick up
if you hit something, run aground, or maybe even hit it loading the boat onto the trailer.
So mine is located right here next to this outboard, so I'm just going to come back here,
I'm going to reach down and feel around to make sure it's in the right position.
Now if your boat lives in a wet slip, you might also want to feel around on the face of the
transducer and make sure there's not a bunch of growth or barnacles. That usually won't completely
eliminate its readings, but it will degrade the quality. Now let's say you have a settings issue.
This is very common, people! If the sensitivity is too high, you'll get tons of clutter. If it's too
low, you won't get any readings. So what do you do? People, the fist to this is incredibly simple:
Press the auto button. The truth of the matter is that today's fishfinders have such
advanced algorithms, they can do such a good job of doing the fine tuning all by themselves,
very few people can do it any better. Also, people, remember, on many boats,
once you get up to 20, 30 miles an hour, a transom-mounted transducer will lose its reading.
Now, those adjustments can help, but if it's not exactly what you're looking for,
you probably need to go to a pro and have a thru-hull transducer mounted.
Don't forget to subscribe to the BoatUS YouTube channel so you don't miss any of our new videos
as they come out. I hope this one's helped, and I hope you find and catch more fish!