Ever look at a fish-finder’s screen and
joke to your buddy, “Those aren’t fish.
That’s just electronic gobbledygook”?

The “gobbledygook” looks nothing
like fish, indeed.

But when the catches bite, anglers can’t
argue with the machine, though reading
the fish finder takes interpretation.

Still, in this day and age, why can’t the screen be made to look like the underwater fish, baitfish,
vegetation, rocks, ship wrecks or drop-offs that the
fish finder is trying to depict?

It can.

Lowrance’s new Elite DSI Series of fish finders and chart plotters,
being introduced in early 2011, feature a screen that can show
photo-like images of the bottom.

Fish look like fish. Vegetation looks
like vegetation. And so on.

The Lowrance DownScan Imaging
used in the machines is sonar that
can produce photo-like images of
the fish, structure and bottom
underneath the boat.

No interpretation is needed.

Or the fish finders can be switched
to a mode to show the electronic-
looking images in tradtional fish finders.

That can be useful for pusposes like seeing thermoclines or the boundary between cooler waters and warmer waters where fish hang,
or whether the bottom is hard or soft.

What’s more, the machines are particularly affordable,
the company says.

Lowrance is producing a number of different machines using this technology that include combo fish finders/chart plotters, stand-alone
fish finders and some that include more affordable features than others.

The Lowrance Elite-5 DSI, shown in the top photo, is a combo,
and the Elite-5x DSI, shown in the other, is a stand-alone fish finder.

To see details, start by visiting the Lowrance Elite-5 DSI Web page.

From that page, see the links to the other Elite machines with
different features and the Mark Series, a more affordable series
that also includes DownScan Imaging.