Posts

Looking for <= $500USD fish finder
        By way of introduction I am a water rat akin to the character in Kenneth
        Grahame's book "The Wind in the Willows"
        
        "Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat solemnly as he
        leant forward for his stroke. "Believe me, my young friend, there
        is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply
        messing about in boats. Simply messing," he went on dreamily:
        "messing—about—in—boats; messing—"
        
        I started fishing this spring and find it more pleasant than ever to
        spend time on and about bodies of water.  Now that I've found ReefMaster
        and seen the power in consumer fish finders I am plunging into Mapping
        with ReefMaster and tracking the wiley walleyes, crappies, and catfish
        where ever and when ever I can.
        
        The units I've been looking at are:
        
        $483USD - Lowrance 000-11655-001 Elite-5 CHIRP with 83/200+455/800 Transducer
        $450USD - Humminbird 409640-1 HELIX 5 SI Fish Finder with Side-Imaging and GPS
        
        I should note that my fishing platform is an inexpensive 10 foot sit
        on top kayak.  For the most part my future boats will be light weight
        craft I can carry on a car top carrier.
        
        My goal is to balance the price, on water chart quality and ReefMaster
        data quality.
        
        What say you on fish finders I should consider?
        

Reply to Matt
        [quote="Matt" post=5764] Are you interested in sidescan mosaics?
        Matt[/quote]
        
        Interested, but don't have the budget I guess.
        
        
        [quote="Matt" post=5764] I fish a lot off my kayak (Hobie Revolution) and on that I use a Lowrance Elite 4 HDI which is great. Maybe a little small for general use, but very cost effective and fully capable of both recording mapping data and displaying maps.  [/quote]
        
        I see these 2 HDI models on Amazon:
        
        $600USD - LOWRANCE LOW-000-11145-004 / Elite-5 HDI Fishfinder/Chartplotter
        
        $600 is to expensive.
        
        $300USD - Lowrance Elite-4 HDI Chartplotter/Fishfinder Combo w/83/200/455/800 Transom Mount Transducer
        
        This looks like one to consider.
        
        
        
        [quote="Matt" post=5764] although the HDS series are a little more capable when it comes to displaying maps Matt[/quote]
        
        As far as I can tell the HDS are to expensive for my budget.
        
        
        I will look at 4 and 5 inch models.  Are there any used units for me
        to consider
        

Notes on fish finders

reefmaster) hermes - I’ve used the lowrance elite 7 (ordinary, not chirp) and have been very pleased with the results in reefmaster. Like you, I use it to make bathymetric charts. To get the best results, you do need to pay attention to tidal data, transducer offsets, do a bar check etc, but I compared a chart I created with reefmaster to a professional bathymetric survey and my chart looked almost identical. Now summer is here, I’m looking at upgrading to a lowrance structure scan unit as I want side scan data. However, I don’t think you would be disappointed if you got the lowrance elite 5

reefmaster) skinnee - A lot more lowrance users here as RM provides a lot of options as Lowrance have a really open mapping platform.

I am no sonar expert but airmar transducers are rated on a lot of forums due to their technology in the transducer. I can see the difference on my boat for fishing. Well respected people across the internet forums use the Airmar P66 for mapping.

I guess it really depends on what you are mapping for to decide what you really need. - i am mapping use lowrance structurescan to provide raster overlays for river structure first on my unit and depth contours next.

ReefMaster) Team Colibri - Sorry to hear that. Garmin is a big company, and just like with Navico (Lowrance) talking to the right people is the key. It takes a few years to find those people and get them to open up…. What we are doing (mapping) is not core-business for any of these brands, so the general salesrep has no idea what we are going on about. You need to hook up with the guys behind the reps, and talk to the techs that actually develops the stuff to get answers beyond Google-quality. I`ve been a “hang-around” in the industry for 15 years and have been fortunate enough to talk to a lot of techs. Usually having their products in your boat, and volunteering as a beta-tester is the easiest way to get to know the tech-guys.

Lowrance has a very sensetive sonar, and apart from their cheapest models they are compatible with Airmar. Both is good news for mapping, especially the Airmar-part. For general fishing most people preferr a ducer with a wide coneangle, but for mapping you want it to be as narrow as you can get it. P66 has a combination of relative narrow coneangle at 200 kHz and a reasonable pricetag. TM260 is even better, but the physical dimmensions and price will scare a lot of people half to death. (At least their wallets will be scared.) But the main reasons many RM-users stick to Lowrance is their openness on mapformats that allow for a lot of custom-features. It is worth noticing that you get the same with Simrad, although in another pricerange.

reefmaster) bigkahuna - Lowrance Structure Scan 3D is going to be officially announced tomorrow. I’m looking forward to learning more about this!

Converting MP format to IMC / Lowrance AT5 1 month 1 week ago #5459 - AnglingCharts -

Very likely - and they’ll have the benefit of seeing how the competition have done it. Interesting times ahead - and probably too many fish in the pond. Three different sets of OEM community mapping systems, all locked to 3 different platforms, with no way to share chart data.

The maritime industry has moved forward on the back of a set of common standards, this is exactly the opposite, and I fear it will be to the detriment of all.

Converting MP format to IMC / Lowrance AT5 1 month 1 week ago #5461 - Team Colibri -

The sort of mapping we use are not important to a lot of users, as long as they can make out “safe depth” on their chartplotter they are happy. But for fishermen, especially in freshwater, Garmin is taking heavy hits to their sales already due to this policy. It will change in one direction or other, but it will not happen soon. Garmin has spent a lot of money over the last 7-8 years or so to get back in the top three of the marine industry. 4-5 years ago I would not even consider buying Garmin due to their crap sonar, it was worse then Raymarine, but today that is not the case.

Remember where Garmin comes from. Their core-business has way thougher standards for mapping then the marine industry, especially the part of the marine industry focusing on leisure-users. Getting the board of Garmin Inc to allow data into their products that they have litle quality-controll over is not something that will go down without a strugle. But I`m confident it will happen, or Garmin will revert back to saltwater cruisers as their main base of customers and all that money spent on R&D to develop/ buy tech used mainly in freshwater and/ or by fishermen will be a vaste. Vasting money is not good business, not even for Garmin.

Converting MP format to IMC / Lowrance AT5 1 month 1 week ago #5469 - AnglingCharts -

things are run a little differently over in the colonies. Many of the lakes this side of the Atlantic will take rather more than a 40kt whip round with a bassboat. We are looking at decades of work in frequently dangerous waters - which they probably arent planning on doing. Even simply getting the shorelines if they decide to go the “zero-contour” route isnt as easy as they’d think. Interesting times ahead - personally I’ll leave em to it and plod on with my good ol’ HDS Gen 1 (ok…theres a bit of other kit as well……..)

Lowrance HDS gen 1 vs gen 2 7 months 2 days ago #4462 - Team Colibri -

The main differences between Gen 1 and Gen 2 are processor and internal memory. Gen 1 will display some colours slightly different then Gen 2 but not much. (I have both side by side so I see the difference.) If you want to map large lakes using raster, Gen 2 redraws a lot faster when zooming in and out. It does so with large vector-maps as well, but raster really kills the Gen 1 if it’s a big map. With HDS Gen 2 looking like it will be discontinued for 2015, you should be able to get one at a good price. The Touch-models continue in 2015.

================= sqlite> .schema track_points

CREATE TABLE “track_points” ( “id” INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL UNIQUE , “track_id” INTEGER NOT NULL , “latitude” DOUBLE NOT NULL , “longitude” DOUBLE NOT NULL , “depth” DOUBLE NOT NULL , “time_offset_ms” INTEGER , “peak_sv” DOUBLE DEFAULT 0 , “e1” DOUBLE DEFAULT 0 , “e2” DOUBLE DEFAULT 0 );

CREATE INDEX track_points_track_id on track_points(track_id);

CREATE TRIGGER “delete_trackpoints” BEFORE DELETE ON “track_points” FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN delete from hardness_points where track_point_id=old.id; END;

sqlite> select count(*) from track_points; 18793

=================

================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= =================