Finder - what am I seeing?

[dopderbeck]

Here are some images of my fish finder up in the Adirondacks a couple weeks ago. The first is in normal mode, the second two are is "sonar simulator" mode. The finder is a Lawrence x-4 pro that came stock with my boat. Question: what am I seeing here? Why is there so much noise near the surface? What is "sonar simulation" mode and why does it read so different from normal? BTW we caught lots of smallmouth but not in any of the spots shown here. We got no hits trolling or live lining these deeper spots (there are trout in the lake).