Have a Lowrance Hook2 on my kayak. Worked fine for 2+ years but the last 2 trips out its been giving me trouble. Sonar pretty much not working 95% of the time. I'll be in 2' of water and the depth on screen is flashing some huge depth like 60' or 130'. No fish or structure showing. Just white screen with the depth number flashing. Every once in a while it would show something that looked remotely accurate and start seeing sonar showing change in bottom depth or pinging fish, but 95% of the time the sonar wasn't working at all.

Water temp, GPS, and my speed are all working fine. Just sonar is acting up.

I thought maybe the transducer may have gotten some mud caked on it from the kayak dragging on muddy bottom sometimes with all the low water in the marsh lately. Just looked at it and the spot in the pic where the Q-tip is at had some mud in that little hole but other than that, it wasn't too dirty. I don't know what that hole is for, but I cleaned it out. Any other troubleshooting ideas so hopefully it'll work next time I go fish?

This post was edited on 1/18/21 at 10:39 am

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Posted by cbr900racer22

City of Central, LA.

Member since Sep 2009

1305 posts

Posted on 1/18/21 at 2:41 pm to Tiger Prawn

Check your pins where the cable plugs into the unit. If you see any corrosion hit it with a little dielectric grease.

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Posted by Tiger Prawn

Member since Dec 2016

21836 posts

Posted on 1/18/21 at 3:17 pm to cbr900racer22

Checked and don't see any corrosion on the pins.

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Posted by bayouvette

Raceland

Member since Oct 2005

4705 posts

Posted on 1/18/21 at 8:14 pm to Tiger Prawn

See if you can get hold of another transducer just to try. Will help to figure out if is the ducer or unit.
In 2ft of water I don't think its gonna work much anyway.

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Posted by BobABooey

Parts Unknown

Member since Oct 2004

14225 posts

Posted on 1/18/21 at 8:47 pm to bayouvette

quote:
In 2ft of water I don't think its gonna work much anyway.

I have a Hook on my kayak and it doesn’t work well in water that shallow. It depends on the color palette as far as what you see but the screen is definitely busy. Once I get a little deeper, it operates normally.

If everything with the wiring looks fine, you might try hanging it over the side to make sure it’s not something about that hull mount. You can also scroll through the settings and make sure you’ve got the right transducer selected.

But if the other functions like mapping and temp are working, it’s probably just the water depth.

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Posted by Tiger Prawn

Member since Dec 2016

21836 posts

Posted on 1/18/21 at 9:47 pm to BobABooey

quote:
it’s probably just the water depth.

It worked fine in shallow water for 2 years. Just started acting up recently.

I might try doing a factory reset on the unit if you think it could be something with settings

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Posted by bayouvette

Raceland

Member since Oct 2005

4705 posts

Posted on 1/18/21 at 10:13 pm to Tiger Prawn

Have you updated software recently

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Posted by Sea Hoss

North Alabama

Member since Jul 2013

847 posts

Posted on 1/19/21 at 8:27 am to bayouvette

My old Gen 2 did this after an update. I borrowed a transducer from a buddy and it did the same thing so I just decided to go ahead and upgrade to the Carbon series and never looked back. I wasted alot of time troubleshooting the issue and never came to any resolution. It would work correctly intermittently but was not reliable at all. I thought it was a transducer issue but like I said, I tried a different one with the same result.

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