Best fishfinder?

The best fishfinder I ever saw is Raven Dave on his CD22 Angler right across the dock from me. I don't know if he even needs it, but he uses Lowrance. Mine is Garmin and it doesn't impress me much, but I haven't really spent much effort trying to master its use. A lot of the time I just follow Raven around.
 
The general feeling is that the Furuno fishfinders are the best--with a good transducer (Transducers are limiting factor). The RayMarine are also well thought of, as are the Lowrance. I have a Lorwance, and it is definately the best one I have ever owned. (much better than Furuno was 10 years ago) It holds bottom lock at all speeds with the transom tranducer.

In the past the Garmin have not been quite as good, but the recent digital finders are giving some very impressive results.

Like Radar, the automatic function may not give the best results. You have to work on tuning it for the specific conditions. For the shallower depths you should use 200 khz, for the deeper depths 83 or 50 K hz.

Another one, to consider, if you want to go into side scan, is Hummingbird. I have one of the less expensive models, and it is OK, but not as good as the 979 (but that costs close to $2000, and there is a forum dedicated to its tweeking...)
 
Airmar now makes a 500 watt transom mount M256 model number.
I added one this year to my Furuno and have been very impressed with it. It's a big unit 2000 ft max depth, precision temp and something like 10 times more sensitive that the Airmar P66 transducer I replaced.

stevej
 
I have a raymarine because of the multi-uses screen. Radar, chart plotter, gps, fish finder. I have been ok with the results of the fish finder side and as I spend more time using it and learning the settings I really like it, but if I was looking for a stand alone unit just for fishing and maybe gps I would get the hummingbird. For one I just love the side scan units that are out now, but I have had humming bird units in all my past boats from 12 ft to 19 ft and have always been impressed with the performance. They are a great unit for picking up the thermocline in fresh water and that is the key to trout fishing lakes. I think that they are under rated units by the west coast salt water fishing groups. Just as cannon downriggers are hardly seen here, but scottys are on every boat even thought they are not as good, humming bird is a well respected east and south coast unit. It just has not caught on here as much. I have heard people refer to them as "just bass boat units" well they are a lot better then that. If and when humming bird decides to produce a "all in one unit" with radar, auto pilot and gps, I will be the first to get one. That being said I hear great things about the lawrance units to.
 
I have had a Hummingbird Matrix 37 side scan for several years now. It works great for my purposes. The GPS tracks my Garmin perfectly.
It is my 3rd Hummingbird fish finder over the last 15 yrs. and I have been pleased with all of them.
Good quality products.
 
Jack in Alaska":3sj81lqa said:
I have had a Hummingbird Matrix 37 side scan for several years now. It works great for my purposes. The GPS tracks my Garmin perfectly.
It is my 3rd Hummingbird fish finder over the last 15 yrs. and I have been pleased with all of them.
Good quality products.
Click to expand...

So, you find it useful in the salt? I was wondering if side-scan was mostly of value to fresh-water fisherfolk.

Warren
 
If you want to see what the newest (and expensive) hummingbird Fishfinders do, go to their forum on Yahoo:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sideimaging/
(hopefully that will take you there). I am on subscription basis. I have a Lowrance on the Tom Cat 255 and a Hummingbird on the CD 25. They are both dual frequency and about the same power and resolution, but the Hummingbird is monochrome, the Lowrance is color. My personal feeling is that the Lowrance gives me a better picture of structure and the fish. I have owned several other Hummingbirds thru the years.

I was considering putting a side scan on my 18 foot center console. (The side scan is only good for about 150 feet to the side. It will work in salt water, but seems to be better in fresh). Look at the pictures and the discussions about getting these to work (There are several factory guys on the list regularly to help with issues). I decided not to lay out the $1800 for the 997. I don't know about the "3 D" series: They are not true side scan, but have 11 interlaced sonar beams which cover a 53 degree segment of the bottom right under the boat. I have not used these.
 
I have not used the Furuno's so can't comment on them. I have however used the Raymarine C series, and the Latest Lowrance LCX series. Of these I prefer the use the Lowrance. I feel that the Analog signal that Lowrance uses is a better way to go. The digital signal that Raymarine uses is "filtered" out too much for my taste. Sure you can tweak it some but not as much as the Lowrance.

I'll be putting one of the new Lowrance units on the 27' when I get her in the water. Right now on my sled I have a Huminbird Legend 2000 that works pretty well despite my bad installation of the transducers. But it is not nearly as good as the new Lowrance units.
 
I think they are all decent, I am leaning towards a Lowrance for my next one, not hugely fond of the raymarine, but the C-80 system is nice as is the Garmin system, just expensive.

Gary how is the 27 coming along? I'm excited to see that fishing machine on the water. You getting close?

Sark
 
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