Need you help selecting a Fish Finder for a J12 skiff

[larryhorne]

Posted this over in the electronic forum with no luck. Hope you guys can help.

Looking for a Fish Finder Recommendation for a J12 Skiff
I'm looking for a good but reasonalbly priced fish finder that I can rig for cigarette power and temp mount to a Carolina Skiff J12. Something perhaps like the set up yaker's use. I will use suction cups to mount the transducer during use.

Any recommendations?

Lar

[Friday]

What is/are your Price range of FF, depths of water, and your target fish?

Joe

[larryhorne]

somewhere between $200-$250, less than 50, specks, pups, schoolies.............average use in local rivers.

[Friday]

Larry Horne,

J12? - You belong to us:yes:

I never used FF over $100 on my kayaks. I used low end FF for my kayaks.

Let me start first. Someone will participate soon.

For kayak I used three Eagle Cuda ($80). They broke within 10 months. Now I have two Humming Bird 170 ($80-100) on two kayaks. It looks Humming Bird are holding up better (more splash resistant).

When I am in less than 10’ of water, I never seen any arch (fish longer than 15”). It was because fish were spooked and got away or the area scanned was so small (compared to the area in deeper water – comes with Dual Beam 60º & 20º Sonar). In the shallow water I use them as Depth Finder not Fish Finder. When I was in 15’ – 90’ of water I could see fish longer than 15” (arch - Croakers, Bluefish, Stripers). I could see my jig head (lure) moving up and down. If I don’t jig I will not know where my jig head (lure) is. I can tell baitfish. But I can not clearly identify small fish like spots and white perch. This low end FF was good enough for my kayak fishing needs. I fish mostly the main body of Chesapeake Bay (up to 90’) and its tributaries, and Ocean (few times a year).

I saw many times that people use “Fish ID ON” option. But it has to be “Fish ID off” so you can see the images.

Joe

[ictalurus]

My Humminbird 565 has been awesome so far, and it has definitely put me on fish. I think it's in your price range. It's got a pretty wide beam angle, but I can't remember the ratio between depth and bottom coverage. The contrast between the different levels of return strength isn't so great, though, and I don't think I could tell different bottom types with it. It's held up for about two years now and has survived being submerged once for 15 minutes or so. If you don't want to use a suction cup, you could plop it in some silicone grease (silglyde from Napa) and shoot it through the hull, which is what I do.