Fishfinder/Chartplotter Transducer thoughts

[Brinormeg]

Once again I'm after some opinions and thoughts form anyone who has used or has any knowledge of :

Lowrance Hook Reveal with side tripleshot transducer or the
Garmin Striker Vivid SV side view

As mentioned on another thread I am looking at the 7 inch versions of the above as the old eyesight is degrading at a worryingly fast rate, and we would get use of the split screen views while out fishing.
The wife was wanting 9 inch but I just told her she would just have to be satisfied with 7
These although not full of all singing all dancing features will probably be fine for us and just below the amount we had already set a budget for a fish finder/chart plotter/depth finder, and are in stock at the moment.

I'm sure the technology has jumped on leaps and bounds since my vey basic original fish finder many years ago, and most reviews online are by American fresh water inshore lake guys, and not much info on using these type units for salt water sea fishing, especially relating to usable depths etc

What do you think would be the best sib fishing transducer given the depth and areas a 4 meter sib would realistically be sea fishing in mainly North Eastern Scotland seas and West Coast sea lochs. Mainly close to shore or taking in relatively shallow wrecks.

Has anyone used these side scan/side view transducers? Are they really a help locating possible fish hold areas? Do they still give a decent depth sonar?
or would I be better sticking to the normal Chirp 83/200 or deeper 50/200, (specs I could find at up to100meter/ 100meter plus)
Not much difference in cost so thats not an issue.


https://www.force4.co.uk/item/Lowran...der-Combo/107F

Thanks in advance for your wisdoms once again

[spartacus]

I'm sure the Garmin and Lowrance units will both be excellent. The technology and image clarity has moved on considerably from the old units, but at a cost.

More importantly if you're fishing North East Scotland it's knowing your marks, and that's where seeing the seabed will help, as its pretty featureless. We were out last weekend and it was like pea soup with a persistent fog. Launched Cruden Bay and steamed to Peterhead. Stayed relatively close to coast, although we had GPS. That stretch of water rarely goes deeper than 100 feet unless you start heading offshore. Hooked a couple of juvenile haddock which was a nice surprise and released them to fight another day.

Also launched Stonehaven a couple of years ago and travelled down near Montrose and managed to find the MV Taurus (using GPS coordinates) which was sunk during the war with my old Garmin mono fishfinder, not the physical shape, just the depth readings. We were going to hang about a bit, but it was late afternoon and it's a bit of journey to get back. She lies in 160 feet of water 2½ miles offshore. Rocks and wrecks are essential for catching fish, so be interested to hear any of your catch reports.

We're using rag, squid, bluey and peeler crab. In fact the fish eat better than we do!

[mickter]

Bear in mind the Garmin has not got proper maps, I have a striker and am going to upgrade to a Echomap as soon as back in stock.

[Brinormeg]

Yeah fancied the echomap for the map feature as well, but stock an issue with them and many others I looked at being august/sept. Sib coming this month hence why wanted to get a unit ordered now.
On looking at the Lowrance, it appears that each actual unit is only compatible with the one transducer, so you have to get the trans right first time as you cant upgrade later.
Because this is our first sib we wont be going very far off shore so figure the sideview type thing might be useful for the shallower waters at the moment. But…..
as confidence and knowledge grows we might venture out to a few deeper wrecks when conditions are right, (also several sea lochs on the west coast can be quite deep)….so we are concerned that the sounder wont have the depth needed, so we are also considering the other transducer set ups which would mean missing out on the side view, if its actually any good anyway!
We are finding it hard to get real world facts on usable depths with these units except for the 83/200 and 50/200 being suitable up to and above 100 meters. Where as with the triple transducer I’ve not came across much info on saltwater use.

I feel your pain with the bait, and works out really expensive too! As for catch report….will do…..but we find the shore fishing hard going up here and I ‘m hoping for better from the sib. But as you say its all about structure and knowing what decent marks there are.
Uncle used to have a small crab/lobster boat out of Boddam, and we know Cruden Bay, and surrounding area well (just not from the sea)
Took a Paddle board course last year at Stonehaven and went just out past the harbour walls, but conditions weren’t suitable to head to the Dunnottar castle. Harbour was jammed packed so don’t fancy my first couple of launches from anywhere busy for the embarrassment…it was bad enough on the paddle board because every time I tried to stand up I landed in the bloody harbour..…so not for me, but the better half and teenage son loved it though.

[mickter]

My local chandlers says he will have stock of garmin in 7/10 days.
apparently the factory that supplies the chips had a major fire,that`s why GPS/ Finders are in short supply.

[jeffstevens763@g]

I have a lowrance hook 7 with 83/200 transducer eyes not so good but this unit fits the bill for me easy to use I use it on auto simple

[jonp]

The bigger the better, Ive had two 12inc lowrance hds units (mk3 & carbon) both with sidescan and traditional down scan etc. I could do very good sidescan to depths of around 70m and 80m to the skies, traditional sonar to 500m from the stock standard 200-50khz transducer. I did buy a 1kw airmar tm 260 which if anything was worse in deep water because of its narrow beam width.

Ive used Navionics platinum with lowrance for many years (all now owned by Garmin ) I much prefer the Garmin G3 charts.

I moved away from Lowrance after many years of use and many years of issues with their units. I know use a Garmin 8410 echomap and a echomap 105 in the boats I have now. I would pick even the small 6 inch echomap over lowrance these days as they seem to handle abuse far better and have far less firmware glitches.

The gt51 transducer I use on the 8410 sidecans well to 200m+ either side of my boat in depths of around 140m where I search for mackerel schools that tuna and marlin feed on. For game fishing its an incredibly useful bit of kit being able to scan for bait species over such a wide area as Im pulling lures. The gt51 will reach over 500m in depth. I can even pick up krill and obviously whales feeding on the krill.

Many people will complain about sidescan not being that good but this is often from people who don't bother to learn how to use it or even which frequency to be on at different depths. Left on auto settings and the correct frequency you will get reasonable results but to get the most out of these features you do have to make adjustments manually as well as understand how to use the boat for best sonar images (speed and direction).

There are both free and paid seminars on YouTube and other sources to get the most out of using these units. I figure every trip a person makes out in their vessel where they return home disappointed in both catch results and frustration in trying to use the head units is wasted money (fuel and time ).

Even a low end sounder plotter should show both fish and structure from any of the modern units. Both Lowrance and Garmin for me seem very intuitive with there menus. The resolution down the screen is more important than width if you want to see more detail of fish or bottom structure. A screen with 1920x 1200 like mine will give double the detail of a screen of 800x600 etc.

[Brinormeg]

Originally Posted by jonp

The bigger the better, Ive had two 12inc lowrance hds units (mk3 & carbon) both with sidescan and traditional down scan etc. I could do very good sidescan to depths of around 70m and 80m to the skies, traditional sonar to 500m from the stock standard 200-50khz transducer

Thanks for the info guys.

But to clarify...the Side Scan part of the Lowrance "Tripleshot scan" is very good in salt water to 70/80 meters and to the sides?

So do you know what the khz of the normal "Down Scan Imaging" (chirp sonar) is, and what depth its good for?

[Pikey Dave]

Originally Posted by spartacus

....to find the MV Taurus (using GPS coordinates) which was sunk during the war with my old Garmin mono fishfinder....

Aye! They don’t make Garmins like that anymore [emoji6]

[Brinormeg]

Originally Posted by Pikey Dave

Aye! They don’t make Garmins like that anymore [emoji6]

Originally Posted by spartacus

which was sunk during the war with my old Garmin mono fishfinder

TAURUS MV lies off Montrose, Scotland. The motor ship TAURUS(III) was built in 1935 by A/S Akers Mek. Verk in Oslo for the Wilhelmsen shipping line. A graceful fast vessel of 4,767 gross tons, she measured 408´ in length, with a beam of 55´ and a draught of 25´. Only four years after TAURUS was completed World War Ii broke out. After the German occupation of Norway on 9th April 1940, 44 of the Wilhelmsen Line´s vessels, outwith Norwegian boundaries came under the control of the Norwegian government in London and thus under the British Ministry of War. In May 1941 TAURUS set off from Freetown loaded with a cargo of foodstuffs on a passage up the west coast of Africa, rounding Britain and passing down the east coast destined for Hull. At 0044 hours on the morning of 6th June 1941 she was making good progress in convoy. She had just passed Aberdeen and Stonehaven.

She was suddenly attacked by an enemy aircraft and three bombs were dropped from low altitude. All the bombs exploded in the water close to her hull. Some plates were burst and her hull started flooding with water. She took on a list to port and started to settle by the stern. She was taken in tow for the port of Montrose some 15 miles away but two hours later she was the victim of a further air attack.

Three more bombs were dropped. As with the last attack these all missed but exploded close enough to the hull to cause further damage. She started to settle more quickly into the water and the tow was diverted to run her aground on the shore nearby.

Soon she was attacked once again but this time their their deadly Garmin Mono Fishfinder bombs made target.

She never made the refuge of the shore and sank in 50 metres of water some 2 ½ miles offshore.

[jonp]

Originally Posted by Brinormeg

Thanks for the info guys.

But to clarify...the Side Scan part of the Lowrance "Tripleshot scan" is very good in salt water to 70/80 meters and to the sides?

So do you know what the khz of the normal "Down Scan Imaging" (chirp sonar) is, and what depth its good for?

Apologies, mine wasn't the newer improved triple shot. I had the older lss2 for side and down scan and a basic non chirp old 200-50 kHz transducer (I now use the newer transducer that does all three but with Garmin ).

Ive tried to upload some lowrance screen shots but this site is stopping them from loading for some reason (possible size or format ). So with the older lss 2 I could clearly see and use 70-80m either side of my boat in depths of 40-70m. However even on a 12 inch screen you are looking at detail of an area larger than a football field compressed onto just a 12in screen, so even though the images are sharp crisp and clear, they are also very small and an awfully large amount of detail to try and look at while moving along.

Ive just done a screen shot of one of the old images but will need to find some better ones when I get a chance on my main computer. In this image Im only scanning in 29m of water but you can see that sidescan is on 455khz (same as triple shot has) and traditional down scan is on 200khz. The 200khz holds bottom to over 300m quite well and the 50khz well past 500m if the boat is at low speed.

In this image the top left is the chart page with sideman being layered onto the chart, right is traditional old school 200 which most of us would of been using for the last 30 years and the bottom image is 455 sidescan set to 60m either side.

I would like to add these images were with the unit pretty much in full auto, taken before I had looked into any of the online training courses, hence why they aren't that great. With my Garmin and 260khz Im able to scan wider and much deeper, also the Garmin is a more powerful unit, so able to drive transducers to the max.

Behind the rocks you can see small clusters of dots, these are schools of fish about 3in long, mackerel show far more densely because they school tighter together.

[jonp]

With the image above you can see the top right (old transducer 200khz) sonar shows pretty much a dense blob of red with very little separation or detail to tell the size of the fish but the bottom is good and shows good living marine growth. With chirp that blob of red is far more separated and individual fish can be better estimated on size as well as great bottom detail.

Both the layered sidescan over the chart and the bottom image lack contrast and brightness, adjusting these manually greatly helps in both structure and fish finding.

You can see by the shapes of the rocks in sidescan that Im scanning side on to the swell. By simply turning the boat to run with the swell makes the image detail far more useful and easier to understand. Like I said this was from when I first got the unit and was just getting to know it.

With my Garmin I also have a panoptics transducer, which is the biggest jump forward in many years in terms of fish finding, before this changes have been small and a 15 yr old unit could do much the same as most modern ones when setup correctly.

Transducer placement and constant tweaking until you are happy with what returns you are getting can be a pain but worth it when you get it right. When I mentioned 200khz in 300m of water, I can read that at 40kh and find fish.

[Brinormeg]

Thanks very much for taking the time to answer my many questions. It seems the set up you have now is working well for you, and if its one of the many tools to try help catch fish at out disposal nowadays.

Stock here has been an issue and to be honest I'm completely new to fishing from a sib and have a limited budget for a plotter/fishing finder. The slightly higher end units above my budget all seem to have all the features I would want but out of my reach this year.

The Lowrance 7 inch being within budget and available now were the main choice factors, but just couldn't make up my mind which unit would be most suitable for my use on a close to shore or sea loch environment. Unfortunately I discovered these units aren't upgradable later to different transducers hence why I was afraid to choose one over the other.

As with most things.....its a compromise as ever, and perhaps later armed with more knowledge and experience, even a second hand better finder/plotter might be yet another purchase to help catch the little buggers


Anyway everyone's thoughts and experiences have been really helpful.
Have added a screenshot which I finally found on their site which gives a rough idea but of course is full of sales patter to hook more fishermen than fish!

[Fenlander]

I'd always try and hold out for the budget to enable a plotter/sounder combo rather than just the sounder. Even on smallcraft plotters are brilliant... almost lifechanging.