August 5th, 2009 | ( Leave a comment )

Fish Finder Training Emulators – Eagle & Lowrance Setup Help

You may already know this but if you don’t, you are going to thank me if you own or are looking to buy an Eagle or Lowrance fish finder. What am I talking about? The fish finder emulators/simulators you can download for free off the Eagle and Lowrance websites. You install the emulator on your computer and when you run the program it pops up a picture of a sonar unit with functioning controls (see the picture below). You can hit the menu button and cruise around trying different settings and learning what the various features really do. You can experiment with sensitivity (auto and manual), grayline, chart speed, ping speed, and all the other features, all from the comfort of your home. The software even stores your latest settings just like a real fish finder, so you might need to find that “reset” button to get things working again after you play around with the settings a little too much. I suggest that you review the emulator and manual and write notes of some things to try on the water. Then when you are on the water you can try the real deal and see how it works.

Eagle and Lowrance have been offering these emulators for a few years now, and they have certainly helped many of us to better understand our fish finders. I haven’t seen emulators for Humminbird, Garmin or the other manufacturers, but if you know of anything like this please post a comment and tell us about it. You can also download a free copy of the user manual. With the emulator and the owner’s manual you can really learn a lot about how these fish finders really work.