Codshead is right you shouldn't use silicone for mounting transducers - From the Humminbird manual:
"Do not use silicone or any other soft adhesive material to install the transducer, as this material will reduce the sensitivity of the unit. Do not use five-minute epoxy, as it has a tendency to cure before all the air bubbles
can be purged, thus reducing signal strength."
My take on it:
If you use the wrong couplant (in this case the bonding material) you can significantly reduce the power transmitted by the transducer and consequently that of the received signal.
What you will see on the screen is a perfectly clear picture of the strong echoes (e.g. seabed) and your FF will apear to be working perfectly. However, those echoes faint enough to drop below the threshold of detectability, due to the couplant losses, will not show! That means, you might be missing the (important) finer details such as where the small fish are - the big fish always call on the little fish for lunch