Fish locater ideas

[pjprod]

Fish locater ideas

Question. I am possibly looking to upgrade to the "latest greatest". For you trolling gurus/charter captains what are you guys running for a brand. I have a humminbird 959 but was looking to upgrade to a wifi...bluetooth chirp model. I was looking at the new Simrad models...any thoughts?  

[Bozeman Bob]

I suppose it would depend on where and what you mainly fish for along with your budget. Are you integrating it with Radar or Auto Pilot ?  Everyone is going to have there own opinion and more often than not it will be what they have on there ride. I run a Furuno stand alone and Raymarine  MFD that is wi-fi so I can use a tablet at the stern if I don't feel like walking up to the dash to see what's going on with the Radar ,GPS, Engine Gauges,AP or Fishfinder. I have no experience with Simrad and if no one gets back to you on that I would Google the model number it for reviews.

[pjprod]

Thanks for the reply., I was wondering about chirp... no chirp...is there a big difference? Also, I wanted to upgrade so I can have wifi for a tablet at the stern as well.

[Bozeman Bob]

Not sure if Chirp would really do any good on Ontario, that's why I asked where do you mainly drop a line. At the west end of O there is no structure to speak of besides the bar. So in most cases your fishing thermoclines and a set depth ,not structure. I see no advantage in that case but others may disagree. Probably caught more fish that were never marked than ones that were. Don't get me wrong it's nice to see the screen light up and your hopes do rise with that along with resetting your bait depths. To me its more about presentation and thermo . If I was Bass ,Walleye  etc fishing on Erie or the FLakes the chirp would be go for sure.

[jimalbert]

Im no guide.  But I have been around the block for a long time (mostly fishing Bass tournaments) from the Thousand Islands to Florida and have used a bunch of different sonars from multiple manufacturers.  Now I troll in the Finger Lakes and on Ontario.  I can honestly say from a pure performance and customer service standpoint that I would seriously consider the Garmin products.  The service from Lowrance is sub-par and any time I called Garmin for support they were over the top helpful.  I purchased a Garmin 73dv (it has traditional sonar as well as Down Imaging) for my helm and I love it.  I then purchased a small Striker unit with DV for the bow of my boat when I bass fish occasionally.  When I received the Striker one of the pins of the power cable were damaged and they shipped one to me overnight free of charge.  

 

Just my .02

Jim

[Sk8man]

I think there may be a misconception here....CHIRP is not the same as something like structure scan for example. It is basically a "filler" frequency range wise that adds to the capacity for imaging in greater detail mainly as pertaining to things like separating out fish from bait and different sized targets such as fish as well as perhaps picking up the thermocline better.. It basically enhances the image presented on your screen.

Edited February 7, 2017 by Sk8man

[jimalbert]

Les is right.  I should have specified when I used the DV language that I dont use that at all for trolling, only when bass fishing and looking for structure.  My 73DV also has chirp as I think most new generation sonar do.  I personally dont think chirp would be a necessity for trolling though.

 

Jim