Author Topic: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)  (Read 12559 times)

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Offline sandman

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #10 on: February 26, 2011, 09:31 PM »
I would do separate GPS and FF. They are electronics and electronics screw up. With separate units, you only have to replace or upgrade '1/2' of your setup.

Offline dieselaw

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #11 on: February 27, 2011, 09:23 AM »
I would do separate GPS and FF. They are electronics and electronics screw up. With separate units, you only have to replace or upgrade '1/2' of your setup.
              +1         That is what i do. Handheld GPS units are cheap and you can use them somewhere other than the boat.

Offline OneBlade

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #12 on: May 18, 2011, 08:40 PM »
Resurrecting this thread.  I was on a boat today and watched the guy point out on his fish finder various structures on the bottom and fish on the bottom.  I plan to ask him what model he has.  My fish finder doesn't show that kind of detail and is from somewhere in the mid 1980s.  I'd like to upgrade so I talked to Bass Pro guy.  I saw a sonar only unit (Lowrance Mark 5x Pro for $200), a downscan image only unit without sonar (Lowrance DSI Mark 5x for $250 after $50 rebate), and then saw one that had both but went Hummingbird (569C HD DI for $550).  I checked Hummingbird for the combined unit because it appears to be significantly cheaper than Lowrance when looking at units that have both sonar and downscan imaging.

I'm trying to understand if I can get by with just sonar, just downscan imaging, or really just should bite the bullet and get both.  Looking at downscan imaging unit, I could barely make out the fish as they were little dots on the screen that were tough to see, but the structures and ground looked awesome.  Viewing the sonar unit, the fish showed up better and the ground, well wasn't as good as the downscan imaging one.

Would I be wasting my money getting a unit that is downscan imaging only ($250) without sonar?  Does sonar work better in some ways (e.g. suspended fish or finding fish in general)?

Or, do you think the sonar-only unit would show decent ground structure, enough to be able to find not only suspended fish but recognize a large boulder, tree, and perhaps fish on the bottom?

Offline Fishless

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #13 on: May 19, 2011, 04:44 AM »
I have been playing with the new hummingbird (now have a degree in fishfinder use ;D :headbang:) actually once I read the book and played with it out on the lake I am finally starting to understand its use. One thing to remember down scan units don't show fish unless there is a large number of them to get a image and it shows up as a shadow area like shad or straight line such as stripers, but it is easy to switch back to standard sonar or do a split screen. I hope to download my waypoints off the hand held GPS to a SD card and download to the unit and purchase a good lake map SD card as the internal model supplied with the unit is very weak map half the time at pleasant it shows me driving on dry land :laugh: the down scan works great even when up on plane. I do notice I am getting interference between the eagle 480 on the troll motor and the new hummingbird still playing with the settings, for a troller the down scan would be great to show trees etc. then you could mark your course on the graph to stay where you want and to mark a particular area to troll over more than once in open water?
"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them." John Bernard Books

Offline menrats

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #14 on: May 20, 2011, 06:42 AM »
remember the trolling motors or just the ipilot system is a gps system. you can mark spots or your last track. once i git er figured im gunna put a wuppin on yall.

Offline OneBlade

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #15 on: May 20, 2011, 07:00 AM »
fishless, what model number did you end up getting?  Maybe I'll make that as my starting point.  Seems like the Hummingbirds were more affordable when looking at DSI & Sonar combined units.

Offline Fishless

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #16 on: May 21, 2011, 04:13 PM »
my graph is the hummingbird  597 ci HD, still playing with it to figure it out, totally different command functions from my eagle graphs
"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them." John Bernard Books

Offline sandman

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #17 on: May 21, 2011, 05:57 PM »
Found one situation last weekend where the i-Pilot doesn't work. Wind quartering from behind and trying to maintain a drift at a speed less than the wind pushes you :). I would be drifting towards the bank and the power level would be on '0' so no steering. Had to turn around and troll back into the ind to make it track reasonably straight.

That 'anchor' function works pretty well to if there's a little breeze. No wind and it goes nuts trying to keep you on a spot.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2011, 05:59 PM by sandman »

Offline OneBlade

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #18 on: May 22, 2011, 02:03 PM »
Fishless, I took a look at the 597ci HD that you have.  It has dual beam plus and power of 4000W PTP, but doesn't have down imaging.  I did take a look at the few models that contain both dual beam plus and down imaging, but for some odd reason, they lower the power down to 2400W PTP.  That's a concern and I don't know why they did that.  I'd rather fork over the money to get all features and at 4000W, but can't find a Hummingbird model like that.  So, I may check out Lowrance at this point.  Did you go through this decision point as well whether or not to get down imaging with less power or just get the dual beam plus at higher power? 

Offline Fishless

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Re: Fish Finder (Decent and Affordable)
« Reply #19 on: May 22, 2011, 08:38 PM »
mine must be the 597ciHD DI model weird because on the front removeable face plate for SD card it does not have the DI on it but looking at them online it shows it? but mine has down imaging
« Last Edit: May 22, 2011, 08:46 PM by Fishless »
"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them." John Bernard Books

 

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