Get out the sensor button. I'm sure this will bring out some witty quips......But my real question is will a good fish/bottom finder detect crabs on the salt water floor??
I have a Bottom Line (original model) and just bought a 21 ' boat and my first outing will be 'crabbing'.
I have heard that a layer of fresh water off of the Snohomish R. can mess up your unit readings, that right? 2 questions------

Peri,
My guess is probably not. I don't have the same sounder as you, but I don't know how the sounder would pick up that level of detail and distinguish a crab from the rest of the bottom. For crabbing, I find the sounder most useful for depth and also to get a sense of whether the bottom is hard or soft (sandy). Sandy being better for dungees.
JMS

LF is right on man...look for the soft bottom and spots where soft bottom butts up against hard ie reefs, rockpiles. With a color sounder the hard bottom shuld show up as red...the harder the redder.

What about those that expose themselves to expose their crabs????

Peri,

I have a Bottomline Tournement Master HR finder and we have been crabbing the last couple of weekends. I know there are lots of crabs under the boat from what is in the pots. But they do not get detected by the finder. Good question as my wife asked me the same thing 2 weeks ago.

I have watched my pot drop to the bottom on the finder. A buddy was in the back and letting it out. I was helping by staying out of the way. You could see it as it sank by marks angling away from the boat and headed down. The sonar shows fish by the size of the airbladder. I dont think crabs have one or if they do it is very small.

I've been able to see fish come up off the bottom to look my gear over on my sounders before but I've never been able to see any thing that was acually sitting on the bottom. On a lighter side, I have a fishing buddy that is "electronics challanged" and he always turns his gain so high he gets echos and when he asks what the marks are between the two bottom lines I just tell him it's clams

Thanks for the answers. I guess I'll just watch the rings descend.

If You want to do 'deep water clamming', get the coordinates from Chaser.