Fish finder info.

Old School

Old School

New Member
Looking for info = time to up grade fish finder.
Was on boat out of Nanicoke and he had hummingbird unit that showed the shoal and had gps waypoints.
So far from my unit. Mine is like a tin can telephone!
Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and Lake Temagami are my haunts.
Thanks.
 
Probably had a navionics card in it(or similar). They are worth the couple hundred bucks to get them.. invaluable amount of information on them,, just need to be able to decipher it!
 
Not sure where you are from, but if you can, make the trip to Woodstock and chat with the fellers at Angling outfitters,, I was not shopping for a finder, but was there buying tackle and over heard, ok, I eavesdropped on them educating another fellow on the pros and cons of each model. And when he was done the fellow left, and I took one,, A Lowrance, Hook 7 with Nav card.

The Navionics card gives you finer detail of depths of many lakes, and apparently you can also use it to make your own maps of lakes that do not have fine detail,, I tried that on a lake north of sudbury last summer, recorded a bunch of data, sent it to Navionics, but never seen the product, So I prob screwed it up,

The card I got with mine I think is for all of Canada,, but you can only load so much detail on the card at a time, I was able to load from lake Erie to ottawa and north past thunder bay,, so most of Ontario.

I could not believe the accuracy increase from my old can on a string. Well worth it, and the price at AO will be as good as anywhere, but no way will you get the level of service and info from anywhere else,,

Good luck.
 
I run Humminbird Helix and am very happy with it. The Lawrance units are just as good. Both have their own pros and cons. First figure out your budget. Then I would recommend you go to Angling Outfitters and shop.Very knowledgeable staff and they have pretty much everything you could possibly need.
 
I run a Hum helix 7 gen 2 and lowrance. Both are good. Dont over think it. Look for half decent transducer power and a gps and you cant go wrong. Tour Navionics card adds a couple of hundred. If your budget is limited find used in kijijji.
 
Use to have a humminbird upgraded two years ago to a Lawrence HDS gen 3 and will never look back. So much easier to use. Previous comments bang on re Joslyn at angling in woodstock. Guru. If the current pandemic keeps you away lots of online reviews.
 
@fireram when loading the Navionics card you don't have to pick one complete area, you can pick and choose what lakes, or with the Great lakes, the parts you will fish and not worry about the parts you won't be fishing.

Just pick your area or lake and load it. Pick another lake and load it and so on.

Here's how mine is loaded at the moment.

nav1.jpg

Hope this helps with the card size issue.

I still have about 550 MB free space on the card.
 
Humminbird, Lowrance, Simrad, Raymarine etc. all make great fish finders but you also may want to look at some of the great new units out by Garmin as well. If you ask 5 guys you will get 5 different answers but can't go wrong all do a great job so it's just a matter of preference what you like. The only thing I would say is a must is make sure it has GPS with a good mapping. Good luck on your quest. :)
 
if you can afford it buy a touch screen, scrolling through menus with buttons is just awful once you have used a touch screen fish finder.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jow
If you got the $ then get a bigger screen. Usually can get one bundled with Navionics card. Hbird or Lowrance both fine units. If your going to end up with radar and auto pilot then Simrad. Down scan and side scan not that useful. Gps is huge for marking spots and schools. Catch a fish mark the spot go back over it maybe get another.
 
Looking in to up grade my self. Found a hook 9 splitshot for 799.99 at sail. Reg Price 1049.99. I fish about a dozen times a year and think I will get it. I will only be runing the one unit. Out of a 16 foot aluminum.good question I was going to ask the same yesterday. Lol
 
I've used humminbird helix series and lowrance hook series recently.
Lowrance is more user friendly, but in my opinion not as good as humminbird.
I also use my unit of the boat for ice fishing.
My lowrance hook 7 is ok, but I wouldn't buy another one. The gps screen will not refresh and keep up to date while driving at 35 km/he, and my boat does 50.
When on the ice, the screen will not keep up with a lake trout racing up to a mid depth bait, with the ping speed and screen speed set to max. My old humminbird unit kept up just fine.

GPS is worth every penny.
If you're a lake fisherman, than si and di might not be worth it.
If you're fishing structure and trying to locate fish, si is amazing.

My .02, I would get a humminbird helix, the biggest you can afford.
 
Old School said:
Looking for info = time to up grade fish finder.
Was on boat out of Nanicoke and he had hummingbird unit that showed the shoal and had gps waypoints.
So far from my unit. Mine is like a tin can telephone!
Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and Lake Temagami are my haunts.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
I run Humminbird with a Lakemaster Ontario SD card. Your haunts are on it with detailed 1 foot contours.
 
Thanks for all your responses.
I have ordered the

Garmin ECHOMAP Plus 75sv with GT52HW-TM Transducer & LakeVu HD G3 Canada (010-01899-05)		$669.99$669.99
Gps Central out of Calgary.

Cheers Tom
 
anyone took Helix on the ice? how does it handling the cold temp? I have my hummingbird 788 working fine on both summer/winter but I'm thinking to upgrade too.
 
Silly question of the day I have a hummingbird 788ci can the transducer be upgraded or would I need to replace the whole unit. It is not giving me any major problems just curious if there is a better transducer its about 8 years old and there is no update on the softwere since 2012
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
✖
AdBlock Detected

We get it, advertisements are annoying!

Advertising is what keeps Channel 6-8 on the air. To this end, please take a moment to disable your AdBlocker. If you would prefer an ad-free experience, but would still like to help support site operations, please consider making a donation.

I've Disabled AdBlock    No Thanks