Fishfinders

[chook555]

Gidday all you ###########. I am new to this chat board and don't know if this subject has been brought up before. I am in the market for a new fishfinder,my old Eagle Magna11 could'nt handle the pace. With so many fishfinders on the market these days what are the best and what does one look for, ie: High RMS power/high resolution or low power/high resolution and so on? I was seriously looking at the Humminbird 250dx. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

PS: Forgot to mention that I'll use it for Saltwater fishing. Mainly reef with a bit of game.

[Simon]

to help narrow down your options what sort of fishing will you be using it for most, ie. salt vs fresh etc. and what do you want it to do for you. Other than that you would want the best resolution (pixels on the screen that your money can buy) this takes alot of the guess work out of the images and lets get a better picture of what the fish are actually doing (how active they are) so you can match your technique to the fishes mood.

Cheers

Simon.

[Smithy]

Do yourself a favour and buy the most expensive model you can from either the Garmin, Lowrance or Eagle stables. Humminbird don't seem to stack up in the pixels per dollar equation compared to the brands above. If you can stretch your budget to $700 a Zercom might be the go. There is a fair bit of hype for Raytheon stuff at the moment but I am disappointed with my JRC which is the same as the Raytheons and Apelcos.

[Steve_Kanowski]

Northside Marine are selling Lowrance X75s for $699 and X85s for $799 at the moment.At this price these units represent excellent value for money.If your fishing is mostly saltwater i,d go for the X85 as it has better capability in deep water with 3000 watts peak to peak power,5 times that of the X75.These sounders also have more features than a swiss army knife,great for those quiet days on the water.

[chook555]

Northside Marine are selling Lowrance X75s for $699 and X85s for $799 at the moment.At this price these units represent excellent value for money.If your fishing is mostly saltwater i,d go for the X85 as it has better capability in deep water with 3000 watts peak to peak power,5 times that of the X75.These sounders also have more features than a swiss army knife,great for those quiet days on the water.

Steve, Could you please give me the Phone number or www address for Northside Marine. I would like to contact them to talk business.

[imported_admin]

Northside Marine contact details

Sales Phone (07) 3265 8000
Sales Fax (07) 3265 8025
E-mail info@northsidemarine.com.au
Website www.northsidemarine.com.au

[davo]

Chook,
I'd be a little bit wray about the Lowrance /Eagle stuff. Although I think that when Lowrance electronics is running it is very good the problem is relability and after sales service. Please read my comments under the GPS enquiry that was posted a while ago.

The only LCD sounder to last for us has been the Humminbird.
I must admit I think their display is not as good as the others but this is only on our smaller boat. I'm waiting to see how good the Garmins are because the grayline type display suits me better and the GPS units have been very good.

I was so frustrated with Lowrance that I put a 6 inch colour unit on my bigger boat and I haven't looked back. After my experiences with them I promised myself to deal with companies that had agents locally.

We did have a problem with one of the Humminbirds but it took two days to fix not six weeks.

Good Luck and happy fishing

Davo