Depends on the size of the lake you’re fishing. Anything bigger than 50 acres - it’s a must.
I ended up picking up a Humminbird 343c. I can’t wait to install it on the boat this spring!
I have been on many fishing trips and the captain was using Furuno fish finders and we never had a dry trip. With 10 people on the boat we caught 2 stripped bass each and in New Jersey that is the limit per person if the fish are big enough.
Check out this site they have a large variety of fish finders to choose from: http://www.fishfindergarage.com/
A fish finder is important, a fish catcher is better.
First of I would like to say that is it very important to have a fish finder on your rig. Its not necessary to look for fish showing up on the finder but more for finding valuable things like humps, Drop Offs, Shell Beds, Timber and Rock Piles. A lot of people buy them at just drive around looking for the little fish symbol to pop up. I Don’t think this is a very accurate way of finding fish. However, you can locate schools of baitfish and even fish with it. I would recommend that you turn of the Fish Symbols Tool because it doesn’t seem to be as accurate in finding actual fish and use the other setting instead.
It’s very important I have had Lowrance’s and Humminbirds both have been good units. Seems to me that Humminbird has jumped ahead of Lowrance on technology I was torn between the new Lowrance HDS models 5 and 7 and the 798ci si from Humminbird, went with the bird I like it still getting used to it. HDS models getting a lot of bad reviews about water leaking into units and couple of my buddies had theirs replaced or other software issues.
I can’t wait to start using my fish finder. I’ve found a lot of random reading material online about how to fish while using one.
But does anyone know of a good book or guide that would help me learn how to use a fish finder while fishing?
I know the user manual will help me with how to work the unit, but I guess I mean more like what to use on what type of structures etc.
If you let people know what kind of finder you bought it would help with giving advice. What you fish for mainly would help too.
I ended up getting the Humminbird 343c color unit.
I fish on a small lake, mainly for bass and stripers…
Any info on how to use the fish finder best will be helpful, so far all I know is look for drop offs, channels, etc?
i’m also looking to get the 343c portable edition for my small 2 man plastic bass boat. i was also thinking about getting the lowrance x510c because of the screen size and the brightness…but to make that unit portable will cost me around $430 to where i can get the 343c portable for $280 total.
Chrome, If money is not an issue i would deff go for the X510c. It is an awesome sonar. I have it on our 20’ pontoon and it is well worth the money. The different color schemes you can get on the screen really help fishing in the day vs. night. It has a night vision screen that is just awesome. it is a black background with green detail. you can pick out everything. and during the day i use the blue background and the fish pop out as red arches. The detail this unit produces is awesome. you can tell exactly what is on the bottom and weather it is a hard or soft bottom.
That being said if you are going to use it on a little plastic boat it may not be worth all the hassle. maybe you should go with the portable unit. I do have an old bottom line fishing buddy that i use on my inflatable pontoon kick boat that works fine for me. I don’t use it to look for fish though. It is a low end sonar that will say anything is a fish lol. i use it for a depth finder and to look for some structure, when i find that i get some fish. However the fishing buddy line has been taken over by humming bird i think lately and i heard nothing but good things about them.
So hopefully you can make a decision with what i told you. I know you will like the X510c if you get it, but is it worth the hassle putting it on such a small boat? I think a completely portable system would be the way to go for you. If you were ever to get a bigger john boat or something like that, i would go with the 510c all the way!