New to forum need some help- lowrance elite 5 ice

So trying to broaden my ice fishing abilities I decided to buy my first electronics for fishing. I ended up with a Lowrance elite 5 ice machine. I have had no experience with anything prior and I’m trying to figure out how to work this thing. I was in 17-18 fow today and it reads it but often flashes 2 fow out of nowhere and seems to keep confusing my bait with the bottom. I’m thinking I need to run it in manual mode maybe? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Try turning the sensitivity down. You might also need to adjust your transducer to be below the ice as well. I have not used your graph but That is where I might start. Hope all works out, it will be a fine graph for open water too, just buy the other transducer.

Go into settings and make sure you are in shallow water mode(100ft or less) select the 200khz transducer setting and select ice mode. Make sure all automatic settings are off and run manual mode. Ping or scroll speed to max. Once those are set you can go adjust everything else accordingly to your likings. I have an Elite 5 ice myself, got anymore questions just ask.

I like to also use the 4x zoom and set the bottom just above the bottom of the screen, this will give you the best seperation of your jig and fish. I also set surface clarity to low and that seems to really clear things up. Just manually adjust the sensitivity to the jigs your using, I like to set it to where my jig is very small, when using jigging raps or similar big jigs you really have to turn it down, don’t worry it will still clearly mark fish coming in.

I just called the retailer and he said my ducer must be defective. I tried all your tips still read 2 fow but on the manual depth setting I could make out bottom in the dark part of the screen. In to town tonight to exchange it hope the next one works. I think it’s a good machine if it works. Thanks again for the tips guys. I’ll keep you posted.