Downrigger - fishfinder interference

[fishfam]

Hello,
perhaps this has been discussed and I didn't find the thread. I have a Humminbird 597 ci HD.
When I lower the down rigger round ball into the water the fish finder kind of gores haywire.
No bottom display, no fish, the depth is evn way wrong. 200 - 300 ft of water and it say 3ft or something like that.
The down rigger is a manual Penn that my Father-in-Law gave to me. He has had it since the 1992 but it is in good shape.
The boat is a 22 ft Aluminum Thunder Jet.
Any ideas what to look for?

Thanks !

[SuperD]

The problem is your downrigger ball. Your transducer is being fooled by the mass of your dr ball and reading it as bottom. If you moved your downrigger to a different location where the ball wasn't in the transducer cone, you would likely not have this problem. The other possible solution is to go to a stick weight that doesn't have the surface mass to confuse the sonar.

[MackayGuy]

Have you tried adjusting your sensitivity, so as SuperD suggests, the sonar doesn't think your dr ball is the bottom? I can see my dr ball on my sonar screen, but it doesn't interfere with the rest of the 'bigger picture'. It just shows up as a line at the depth of the ball.

[fishfam]

I was too interested in catching fish so I didn't play with he finder alot. I did set the sensitivity pretty low and it did not really get better.
I will have to play with it some more.

[Mudinchev]

Another thing to try would be to change the angle of the transducer just a little bit forward or back.

[Bduck]

I pick up the weights with my setting on 50hz. The ball closest to the cone angle at times make it look like bottom. My other FF tells me different which uses 200hz. I don't even see the weights on the other FF. Angling the cone slightly fwd as mentioned should help or changing DR location as mentioned too.

[Old School]

One more thing if it hasn't been said is to set bottom depth range to manual and set it to 200 or what's appropriate. I do this anyway and then manually zoom to my target fishing depth range (eg 30, 50, or 80 ft.) using manual zoom.

[Elk Hunter]

Make sure that the depth is set for the water your fishing in if on manual or in auto, if the depth is set manually to say 100' and your in 200' of water it's looking for the bottom and is probably locking in on your DR weight

Sorry didn't see the previous post, but that's where I would start