Do underwater fish finders and ice fishing sonars work through the ice? No. Do they work under water? Yes! The answer is no because of the physics involved with sound and water. To give you some insight, we'll show what makes them different from each other and how it works.
Underwater Fish Finders:
Underwater fish finders emit sound or sonar signals and when these sound waves hit an object such as a fish, the signal is returned to the receiver and translated into a picture on your screen. These devices use high frequency sounds up to 200kHZ. Fish finders send the same kinds of signals we use for communicating with submarines. The difference is that fish finders send them out through water.
Whitefish Lake, Michigan
These signals travel in a straight line and bounce off structures under the surface such as rocks or schools of fish. Because they are sent through water, sound waves scatter much less than if it was done in air. This means you can detect objects much further away underwater using sonar.
But fish finders are useless when viewed through the ice because it is opaque to high frequency sounds, so water below the ice will not be displayed on your screen.
Ice Fishing Sonars:
Ice fishing sonars operate in a similar fashion as Underwater Fish Finders but instead of sending sound waves through water they do so through the ice. It sends sound waves up through the ice and the temperature at the bottom of the lake determines how many times it is reflected before returning to your underwater unit. All objects in water have some level of reflectivity, but that same object viewed under ice presents a unique challenge because it is now two different mediums being viewed. The sound must pass through the ice and then reflect off of what is in the water below. More often than not, these two reflections happen at different times which causes ghosting (double images) to appear on your screen. This makes it impossible to determine what's under the ice because it becomes a guessing game.
But there are some ice fishing sonars that transmit sound waves through the ice which means they may work on Whitefish Lake, Michigan under certain conditions.
In order for a unit to work it must have transmitted frequencies from 100kHz up to at least 800kHz or better yet 1MHz+. Technology has come along way and is no longer an issue when it comes to this. But there are exceptions to every rule so please call us to ask about a particular unit before buying it. Fish Hunter has been making ice fishing sonars since 2005 and have used our experience in the field, along with customer feedback to produce some of the best units on the market today.
More social:
