Kimberling City and Shell Knob report

[Bill Babler]

Turning your grayline to max, intensifies your bottom reading and highlights any object between your transducer and the bottom. I always run my grayline at no less than 96%. It should in no way compromise your screen. You can however get your sensitivity set so high that it reads your trolling motor, and this will distourt your screen.

You cannot however run two graphs at the same time. This will totally compromise the one you are looking at.

I am going to try and get Mike Webb to do an article on the tuning of the Lowrance LCR. No one in this area is better than Mike. He has gone to Lowrance school a couple of times and has it down. Everytime any of us get a different or a new unit, we have Mike tweek it for us and it pretty much stays good, unless we start to mess it up.

I don't have all the whys and where fors on how this works, I am not a very mechanical person. I have just experimented and had the right help. I also look at the durn thing several hundred hrs. per year.

I have a two year old X15 on the bow and a 332c gps unit on the dash, both read very well, but the black and white X15 on the bow is by far the best unit.

I can drop a 1/64th. oz BB split shot and see it fall all the way to the bottom.

Lowrance has a vhs and a dvd with all the imfo on tuning and operating the X15 and X17

I have found that if you just devote time to the graph instead of fishing until you get it set the way you want also helps. Easy to say and hard to do.

[flipper]

Ive got an eagle 480 that works pretty good{I think}I was told when i bought it that lowrance manufactors eagle and has most of the same technology. does anyone know if this is so and if the adjustments are basicly the same?? maybe the lowrance expert would enlighten us poor boys that are lucky to have any electronics how to adjust and opperate our"finders"if they differ from the high dollar stuff.I know I for one would greatly appreciate learning how to fine tune.does tweaking a unit help ,what is the cost, can it be done to the 480??I 'm running the 480 on the bow and I have a hummingbird 8000 lcr on the console . is the 8000 a good unit ?? it came on the boat with no paper work,manuals,nothing. I'm totally lost on this one and would appreciate any info on it also.I know its old but does seem to work but am lost on adjusting.

[wily]

Look on the manufacturers web-site. They have many of the product manuals in pdf files. I checked humminbird this morning to make sure, and i know a couple years ago i got info off the eagle site for mine. On the humminbird site look in the bottom right corner and it says product manuals...just follow the link and look for your model.

[flipper]

thanks!!!!

[LWW]

Flipper,

Eagle is made by Lowrance and are alot of times close to the excact same unit, just not the big name and the high price. I live here in Tulsa where Lowrance (LEI) is, and I have a friend who works at Lowrance who vouches for all that. He actually just got me an LMS 332C for a great price, and was very informative about all their units. Last year he lined me out with the Eagle Fish Elite 480, which now as I am playing with the LMS 332C, the menus are almost excactly the same with the only difference's in screen resolution, the colorline feature, and a stronger transducer. The Fish Elite 480 (retail $349) is in my mind one of the best units out there for the price. It lacks nothing in GPS features, a quality sonar(200khz with 1500watts for graphs up to 800ft, plenty deep for any freshwater lakes), and a finely detailed 5in LCD display. Go to Cabela's website and compare the Lowrance LMS 480 and the Eagle Fish Elite 480, and you will see the excact same unit only difference you'll find is the $150 price gap for a 4000watt peak to peak power with depth capabilities to up to 2500 feet (who fishes that deep anyhow). Only downfall I've found is that it is not "LowrnceNet" compatible which means I can't share information between units which is about to become very popular.

Coming from an insider at Lowrance, if money is an issue, he says to check out the Eagle's very closely. Of course there wiil be features the Lowrance units have that Eagles don't... but for your money your getting the functions of the big name.

Good Fishin to all..

LWW

[flipper]

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT BASS PRO TOLD ME WHEN i PURCHASED THE 480!! GLAD TO KNOW i WASN'T "REELED IN" WITH SALES BULL!! i HAVE HAD THIS UNIT FOR ALMOSTY A YEAR AND THOUGHT IT WAS DOING A GOOD JOB BUT i OFTEN WONDER ON SUCH PURCHASES WEATHER i SHOULD HAVE BIT THE BULLIT AND SPENT THE EXTRA BUCKS, GLAD i DIDN'T CAUSE IN MY CASE THAT EXTRA 150 WAS BETTER SPENT ON GAS FOR THAT OLD 175 EVINRUDE!! LOL!!! i APPRECIATE THE INFO!!