Garmin Fishfinder 160C Owner's Manual - Page 7

Getting Started Understanding the Fishfinder and Sonar The Fishfinder 160C is a fully automatic, color sonar unit that allows you to go out on the water and find fish without having to configure a lot of settings. However, you can customize each setting as you prefer. If you have used a Fishfinder before, you might already know how to interpret the sonar information on the screen, so you can skip this section. If you have not used a Fishfinder before, you might want to learn a bit about sonar: what it is, how it works, and what you might see on the Fishfinder 160C screen. This manual provides a general understanding of those things that you need to know about sonar that can help you interpret the screen and find the fish. Understanding Sonar During installation, you connect your Fishfinder 160C to a transducer. The transducer uses sound to determine information about what is in the water beneath your boat. Then the transducer sends the information to your Fishfinder to be shown on the screen for you to view and interpret. The transducer sends sound waves down into the water in a cone shape, similar to a flashlight beam (covering a smaller circular area at the top and angling out to a larger circular area at the bottom). Getting Started > Understanding the Fishfinder and Sonar These sound waves reflect off of any object that they hit, and then the waves travel back up to the transducer. These objects could be fish, branches, the bottom, or any other object that has density that is different from the water. The transducer receives the sound wave information, and then sends the information to the Fishfinder. The Fishfinder shows the information on the screen for you to see and interpret. The type of transducer and settings that you choose determine how the information appears on the screen. Understanding the Fishfinder Screen Experimentation and experience are the keys to successfully interpreting your Fishfinder screen. We recommend that you take your Fishfinder out on familiar water, and spend time learning to interpret what you see on the Fishfinder 160C screen. Think of the Fishfinder screen as if you took a picture from the side of an aquarium in your home. You can see how deep a fish is in the water (how close it is to the top or bottom), but you cannot tell where the fish is located horizontally in the water (whether it is near the front or the back of the aquarium). Remember this when you are trying to locate exactly where something is in the water. The strongest sonar returns appear on your screen as the most intense solid red. The weaker returns appear as less intense, less solid colors,with dark blue to black being the weakest. Fishfinder 160C Owner's Manual