Lowrance Hook 4 CHIRP (settings)

Hello fellow yakers,

Recently i purchased a lowrance hook 4 chirp and hooked it up to my revo 13. I have played with the settings while on the water and cant seem to get it even close to right! Usually i have vertical lines on the screen, and no fish on the finder even though im hooking up left and right.

I mainly fish in 30-70 feet of water, What are ideal settings and what setting do you use?

All info much appreciated!

I have an Elite 4 with CHIRP with the transducer glued inside the hull (Eddyline Carribean made of Carbonite 2000 ABS). At times have had questionable peformance and have played with the various Sonar Settings. I have found that 200 Hz, High CHIRP, Auto Sensitivity, Auto Range, appropriate Surface Clarity for water clarity, Fresh Water or Shallow Water settings seem to work best on lakes and rivers in the 30-120 ft range (think I have remembered everything). For the most part, I have experimented on the fly until the unit seems to give satisfactory readings.

There's a great thread over on NCKA discussing recommended settings.  Paraphrasing, they come from the factory pre-set for powerboats and we need a slower ping rate and medium CHIRP settings in a kayak.  There's also software updates available that improve low speed performance.

This thread has gotten pretty long, but pay attention to posts by FishingForTheCure: http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=70461.0

This is newer and shorter, but may also be helpful: http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=67757.msg763844#msg763844

Good luck

Thanks for the links tinker. Went out today and was able to spot fish. Isn't perfect but is atleast marking now!

Sometimes if you aren't catching then not seeing them on the finder is better. 😀 I had similar issues with my Elite 4x and those links helped me as well.

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Also took the time in reading the manual. I believe there are plenty of things I can still mess with to get settings close to perfect. We will know in a couple days though!

Using surface clarity helps alot and I manually set my depth for 10 to 20 ft of what max depth is. I have the same unit that you do. I watched some youtube videos on set ups. Got me on fish the next trip out.

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Only recently have I been able to get my Elite 4 CHIRP dialed in. Much of it has been my own learning curve, with hours of reading the manual and watching youtube videos etc. Now that I have, it sure makes getting on fish and structure better! It just took some practice and getting used to it. It is easy to get overwhelmed. Easy to get something out of whack. Assuming installation is correct, software is up to date and everything is physically kosher my suggestions are as follows:

Read up as much as you can and learn on Youtube etc.

Especially, understand the difference between the two sonars (2D and DI) and where and how to change them in the menus. In general- the higher the frequency- the higher the resolution (detail) you will get on the display.

2D: High Chirp= 200kHz, MID CHIRP=83 kHz Low=50kHz.  I run in HIGH CHIRP.
*If I am around other kayaks or boats, I do notice I will pick up "cross-talk" and start to get what looks like tons of fish showing up on the finder. When this happens I will either change (lower) my CHIRP frequency, or check (and lower) the sensitivity if it's not already on AUTO.

DI- 800kHz offers best resolution while 455 has better depth penetration. I always just use 800kHz for all the waters I am in.

The SONAR SETTINGS: GENERAL USE/FRESHWATER/SALTWATER/TROLLING/DEEP WATER/SHALLOW WATER is critical. I use SHALLOW water when I am in 60 ft. or less (which is most of the time for me) I will switch to FRESHWATER for anything deeper than that. Not even in the near shore salt! The manual clearly states  "Use FRESHWATER mode when fishing in less than 100 feet of water; otherwise your unit may not track bottom properly"

Leave Sensitivity in AUTO until you get a good handle on EVERYTHING else. Then you can fine tune with this setting once you become a learned pro. *NOTE: you can even make small adjustments (+/- 40%) to the sensitivity with AUTO turned ON!

I find Ping speed in NORMAL is best.

Range: Auto

I turn Noise Rejection OFF. We have no other devises or engines on our kayaks that need filtering.

Surface Clarity- I will go back and forth on this one depending on water conditions. Murky- set to LOW. Clear water set to HIGH for more sensitivity. (This was backwards in my mind before I learned a thing or two)

Overlay Data ON- Be sure to go into the options of what you want to display and get battery voltage turned on. (It is off by default)

Set up and customize your split combo screen layouts the way YOU want them! Get comfortable with this and learn how to quickly switch between them when on the water so that it is "second nature".

Fish ID: If you like to see pretty pictures of fish shapes on your screen with the depth displayed they are at, then turn this ON. Once you get familiar with reading the normal fish arches, then turn this off.

Color line: leave this at the default 76%.

Color palates: I leave them at factory defaults

Learn how to read the color of the returns of the bottom. Be able to identify a rocky (hard) bottom vs. a sandy (soft) bottom.

If you purchased Navonics cards or or have other Maps. Be sure you have that selected from the CHARTS menu.

Hitting the ENTER button twice while on the water will quickly enter a mark (waypoint). This is real handy when you mark structure you want to revisit or when you start hooking up.

Of course there are many other settings, but those I have listed above might help someone shorten their learning curve a bit. Hope this helps.

I recently picked up a Hook 4. It showed snow and a few vertical lines. Exasperated I took it  back to the place where I bought it. They played around with it for awhile and ended up giving me a new one. It works perfectly just out of the box.


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Thanks for all the info. Heading out to the salt tomorrow for a quick trip so ill mess around with a few more settings. I have been using General mode on depth so I think switching to shallow will help. Also I have been fishing with surface clarity off, and where I fish is a lot of floating kelp so I think messing with that will help too.

I have a hook 4 that I am still leaning to use and the one tool I have not been able to find is a battery status indicator.  Is there a way to tell how much charge is left in the battery??

I no longer have a HOOK to direct you to the correct pages in the printed manual, but the online version is here:  http://www.lowrance.com/Root/Operator%20Manual/Lowrance/HOOK-SERIES_OM_EN_988-11004-002_w.pdf

Go to pages 16 & 17 where it discusses Overlay Data and then use your finder to see if Battery Voltage is available on your model.  It may not be - I returned the HOOK because it didn't have certain features I like and on which I depend.

Thanks for the response, I am headed out this weekend and will see what I can find.