My head is still spinning with trying to make this decision. Looking for a FF/Plotter combo unit to put on a 17’ Sea Hunt to fish inshore, creeks, jetties, and nearshore reefs when it’s flat outside. It boils down to features vs. price for me.
I had it narrowed down to a unit with down imaging…50dv, Dragonfly, or a68. But the more I read about side imaging it seems like it’s the cats meow for fishing inshore near docks, bridge pilings, and seems it would awesome to scan the entire width of a creek for bait in just one pass.
Is side imaging just the greatest thing on earth for fishing inshore? Until now I hadn’t given it much consideration because in all the screen shots I see, bottom structure and targets appear to be tiny. Do targets on side imaging really always appear so small? Maybe I just don’t understand how to read it. Is the perspective of side imaging on the screen looking down from above, or is like a two sideways views (compared to traditional 2D)? Or two sideways views near the center that transition to overhead views the further out you go?
I understand the down imaging because it’s the same perspective as traditional 2D, just a better picture of structure.
That leads me to the last point, which machines. Humminbird is the only one who makes SI that fits within the budget, Structure Scan and GCV-10 add ons for Lowrance and Garmin, on top of the capable head unit, put their stuff way out of reach for me.
Humminbird 598ci HD SI on closeout for $480, add $100 for Navionics card
Humminbird 698ci HD SI is the only other one that come close to being able to be purchased with the budget at hand.
Raymarine a68 MFD, Gold chart package, CHIRP and Down Imaging, on closeout for $590. It has so many other features that I’m contemplating whether those added features should trump side imaging on a basic unit (like the 598 above).
Garmin 50dv, g2 coastal, found one for $500
Dragonfly, no maps, been offered to me for $433. Add another $100 for a Navionics card
Go to the Electronics tab on “The Hull Truth”…just about any question you ever had has been asked and discussed at length on that forum.
John
Pathfinder 23 HPS
Right, been there time and again. I want to hear from people in this area in particular who use it in these exact waters. Not people who “hear” about this and that 2nd and 3rd hand or once played with one in the store, and not from people who are associated with the particular units they discuss. The main question answerers in the THT Electronics section have such a clear bias and association with each brand it’s broad as daylight. Or they’re a retailer. Also, not many of them understand the concept of spending any less than $1500 on a FF/Plotter.
I have asked questions on THT on multiple units on my list that have gone essentially unanswered. Except for an answer from a guy who does nothing but post about Raymarine products.
My experience is that I don’t really use the downtown or sidescan when I’m fishing inshore. It is kind of neat to see some of the images that show up from time to time, but for the most part I just don’t use it. I do, however, use it with great results in deeper water. When fishing the artificial reefs offshore or nearshore and when I go striper fishing on lake Murray. The sidescan is definitely helped out when the water is deeper. Inshore the water is usually too shallow to do any good.
Side scan is the cats meow In fresh water… Not so much in salt. Currents cause high sedimentation and interfere with the sonar’s ability to pick up detail. I have it on both my boats and never use it down here, (I used it almost solely when fishing freshwater). Downscan is okay but not as accurate as traditional sonar (given you know how to read it). I would stick with lowrance hds7 as it is the best bang for the buck and has a high quality broadband sonar. Just my 2 cents…
I agree with Toothy to an extent. I have the Humminbird 898 SI DI. I believe the marketing around side imaging has given false hope to those who have not seen it in action on their home turf.
For the shallow water around the low country fishfinders wont find you fish. They will help you find structure which fish may be around.
It has helped me find spots at the Jetties and Nearshore reefs.
While side imaging shows structure pretty well, the water column is so small you cant actually see fish. What I end up doing is running a split screen one side normal down image and the other side is side imaging.
Would I purchase my FF again? Yes, because of the size of the screen but not because of side imaging. Not in Saltwater anyways.
edit/complaint:
For Humminbird, if you purchase one with an external GPS puck and it flakes out for some reason you have zero charts. It comepletely shuts down charting and everything related to it. I’m not sure if the other brands do this, but when your GPS puck goes to hell like mine did and it’s the middle of the night you soon realize how unacceptable this truely is. Find one with a built in internal GPS antenna.
quote:Thanks Larry. What percentage of time are you actually using side scan vs traditional 2d?
Actually, not very much. Like the above 3 posters said. It is more of a cool gimmick than a useful fishing tool. I don’t use it even 1% of the time. Maybe less than that. It’s a feature I could do without and not miss.
Never had any trouble with the GPS antenna going bad on any of mine.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Cracker Built Custom Boats
“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.” -Robert N. Rose
Looks like we finally got a little discussion going with those last questions. Thanks for the input. This is exactly what I was hoping for with experience in our particular waters. All of y’all mention that downscan isn’t all that useful other than to just see a cool image. This is the main reason I wanted the downscan, just to get a little clearer image of some of the structure I do and have bottom fished nearshore/offshore, although with this new-to-me little 17’er it really won’t see many days at those old offshore spots. I used to fish inshore a good bit and had never actually used a FF for a FF inshore, really just to show a depth reading on the plotter screen. That was before side/down scan existed and I’ve never seen side scan in action, hence my questioning if it was any more useful than 2D in the shallow inshore waters.
From these responses I’m not spending the extra on side scan, but will still look at down scan units. That may allow me to go up a screen size for the Humminbirds to a 859ci HD DI. Garmin and Raymarine screen size prices increase much quicker than Humminbird, so I’d still be in the 5" category for those two. Although the Raymarine is actually 5.7".
And yes, internal antenna was already a must. It’s a 17’ cc with a bimini and don’t want an antenna right there in the middle of everything on top of the console or on the windshield railing.
quote:Originally posted by Toothy12
I would stick with lowrance hds7 as it is the best bang for the buck and has a high quality broadband sonar. Just my 2 cents…
I’ve had two Lowrances before and really haven’t liked the chart operation of either one of them. Maybe there’s been significant change since then, but for that reason they are out, or at least way, way down on my list. The Elite 7 would be more my budget.
quote:For Humminbird, if you purchase one with an external GPS puck and it flakes out for some reason you have zero charts. It comepletely shuts down charting and everything related to it.
I would imagine that all do that. I recently saw a Garmin unit that completely quit navigating because it’s software expired. Now there’s a handy feature! Had to get a software update to get it working again. Garmin use proprietary mapping software also that’s pretty expensive and doesn’t have very wide coverage, unless they have recently changed to open source.
Lowrance used to make great fish finders, the best I ever had for detail was a Lowrance paper chart recorder with 100 shades of gray and a thermal stylus They aren’t what they used to be and if you need customer service, you can about forget it.
I’d go with an 8" screen, much nicer than a 5.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Cracker Built Custom Boats
“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.” -Robert N. Rose
Well, pretty much scrap this. I got it narrowed down to two 7" units. Budget will be blown.
Garmin 70dv w/ preloaded coastal bluechart and TM trandsucer. Brand new, $800. Very nice discount over a regular retailer and that’s the only reason it made it to the final two. NMEA 0183 only so that’ll lead me to spend ~$100 on a lesser DSC capable VHF. So, total cost GPS/FF and VHF would be ~$900.
Furuno GP1870F w/ transom mount transducer. 1 year old used flush mounted, $500. Furuno quality and support in my eyes is best in the industry. NMEA 2k only, so that’ll likely lead me to spend ~$200 on the SH GX1700 w/ internal GPS antenna since most all radios are NMEA 0183. Total cost GPS/FF and VHF would be ~$700.
Is Down Vu, touchscreen, faster GPS refresh, and new/unused worth $200?
EDIT: Nevermind. The Furuno does not include a transducer so add another $117 to that. That closes the total expense gap on FF/GPS and VHF to less than $100. Question just answered itself. The extra features are worth an additional $85.
I have a Garmin with both DownVu and SideVu. Love both. One thing that I use the DownVu for a lot is to differentiate fish from structure. A lot of bottom structure will look like fish(arches) on traditional sonar, but will look like stumps, brush, rocks, etc. on down imaging. I can also tell the difference with fish that are stacked up on the bottom. Fish that are stacked up on the bottom will often look the same on traditional sonar as does structure. It’s easier to understand what I’m talking about if you get to see them side by side.
Molon Labe!
Until you have loved a dog, part of your soul remains unawakened. - Anatole France (paraphrased)
RIP my “Puppy Dog” 10/15/2004 - 1/14/2013. Still can’t get him out of my mind. What a special friend he was.
Here’s a screenshot of the towers at Lake Murray Dam taken with my Garmin this year. Fish and bait are clearly visible in both views. Image on the left is DownVu and the image on the right is SideVu. Fish will not look like fish, but they will look different than structure.
Molon Labe!
Until you have loved a dog, part of your soul remains unawakened. - Anatole France (paraphrased)
RIP my “Puppy Dog” 10/15/2004 - 1/14/2013. Still can’t get him out of my mind. What a special friend he was.
I bought the 70dv today. Now just waiting on shipping, should be here by the end of the week. I highly doubt I’ll spend hundreds more on the GCV-10 to get side vu, but the 70dv does support it so it’s an option in the future.
Here’s an example of how I use DownVu to distinguish between structure and fish. In the below screenshot, what is fish and what is structure? 1, 2, or 3?
It’s a trick question. Everything on the bottom is structure. But it illustrates how structure will look somewhat like fish with traditional sonar. Same screenshot with the DownVu included.
Here’s another example. The only decent size fish in this screenshot is the one in the circle. Notice how all of the bottom structure looks like fish arches with traditional sonar.
Molon Labe!
Until you have loved a dog, part of your soul remains unawakened. - Anatole France (paraphrased)
RIP my “Puppy Dog” 10/15/2004 - 1/14/2013. Still can’t get him out of my mind. What a special friend he was.
More examples of how fish look with traditional sonar and DownVu. These are Stripers in Lake Murray. I don’t have any screenshots with SideVu because my screen can only be split into 3 parts and I usually have my unit setup to display navigation info, traditional sonar, and DownVu. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some SideVu shots for comparison.
I didn’t mean to derail/take over this topic, just trying to help folks out.
Molon Labe!
Until you have loved a dog, part of your soul remains unawakened. - Anatole France (paraphrased)
RIP my “Puppy Dog” 10/15/2004 - 1/14/2013. Still can’t get him out of my mind. What a special friend he was.
As promised, here are some DownVu and SideVu shots of Stripers in Lake Murray. Everything in the dark area in the middle of the SideVu shots is directly under the boat. The lighter areas are to either side.
One more good example of how structure will look like fish with traditional sonar. Notice how the bait ball that is to the left of center in the DownVu shot, didn’t even show up with the traditional sonar.
O.K. I’m done posting screenshots (and the crowd cheers wildly) unless there are questions/requests (which haven’t been pouring in). I’m going fishing.
Molon Labe!
Until you have loved a dog, part of your soul remains unawakened. - Anatole France (paraphrased)
RIP my “Puppy Dog” 10/15/2004 - 1/14/2013. I’ll never forget him. What a special friend he was.
Here’s another example. The only decent size fish in this screenshot is the one in the circle. Notice how all of the bottom structure looks like fish arches with traditional sonar.
I appreciate the time it took you to save those screenshots to a card and post them here for folks. I disagree with your interpretation of this particular one, though. If you used a split zoom to view only the bottom 10ft of your traditional (funny calling chirp traditional) display, you would see that there’s more than one decent fish in your TX beams here.
The short cut way I tell structure from fish is to pick the brown bottom color palette on a Simrad or Lowrance HDS, which is similar to what you are selecting on your garmin here for your traditional side, but you’ve given up the best way to determine what something is when you white-out that band with Garmin’s option. The traditional and best way to tell what is bottom and what is fish is to look at the tails showing in and under the primary bottom return and adjust your gain to show you the variations in a given set of conditions.
Above, your garmin’s gain is optimized to show fish info the best rather than the bottom info the best. The setting for either one is going to be different than the other, and any automatic setting is going to cost you information at times I feel. Garmin’s chirp settings are excellent for the most part, and a huge improvement over any other garmin sonar in the past. You still are giving up stuff by relying on its automatic stuff though. Not a big deal since you are obviously successful already. Just sharing my opinion with you if you want to try some other things. What I’m telling you is tha
They aren’t what they used to be and if you need customer service, you can about forget it.
