Portable fish finders ?

[Fishooked]

Gents,

Can anyone recommend a good portable fish finder? Im looking for something for my canoe, something that is easy on, easy off with minimal headache.

I'd been looking at some of the Humminbird models that hold the transducer in place with suction cups...any good?

[muskiehunter]

Hey Ted,

Hummingbird fish finders are a pretty desecnt and are reasonably priced so they should work out pretty good.

I have a fishin buddy that looks like a trolling motor which I sometimes use for ice fishing (when my vexilar battery is dead) and it works pretty good and its not to expensive either.Would be able to clamp on your canoe really easy.

Steve

[Fishooked]

Jun 2, 2009 23:46:40 GMT -4 muskiehunter said:

Hey Ted,

Hummingbird fish finders are a pretty desecnt and are reasonably priced so they should work out pretty good.

I have a fishin buddy that looks like a trolling motor which I sometimes use for ice fishing (when my vexilar battery is dead) and it works pretty good and its not to expensive either.Would be able to clamp on your canoe really easy.

Steve

Thanks!

I really need to find out where the deep holes are on my lake...I have a pretty good idea from "trolling" with my canoe - not sure I can sure those two words in the same sentence...

[jbone79]

TED , just buy one of those new '' jointed , electric '' canoe paddles >> LMAO ... p.s . you can get 'em where i got my new riding weed eater !!!

[Fishooked]

Jun 3, 2009 21:39:58 GMT -4 @jbone79 said:

TED , just buy one of those new '' jointed , electric '' canoe paddles >> LMAO ... p.s . you can get 'em where i got my new riding weed eater !!!

Er, uh thanks that was helpful...

[casey10]

I have a Hummingbird portable that used the suction cup (piranamax 215 I think)It worked good and stayed in place at full throttle on my 4 hp and 12' alum. I now have it hard wired in my 16' alum but can move it all over the boat. The transducer is also hard mounted now. I also have a Garmin 250C (color) .If I had known how hard it would be to see a color model I would never have bought it!!!!

[Fishooked]

Jun 4, 2009 12:55:23 GMT -4 casey10 said:

I have a Hummingbird portable that used the suction cup (piranamax 215 I think)It worked good and stayed in place at full throttle on my 4 hp and 12' alum. I now have it hard wired in my 16' alum but can move it all over the boat. The transducer is also hard mounted now. I also have a Garmin 250C (color) .If I had known how hard it would be to see a color model I would never have bought it!!!!

Hey, thanks for the info, I'm definitely going to look into one - thanks!

[greg]

I would hook up a vexliar. has its own battery and carry case and you can use iy also for ice fishing. i like the flasher so much I put one on the front of my boat. Get the flat screen so you can see it in the sunlight without cone Greg

[bacon]

i was thinking the same thing, if you get a second puck, you can epoxy it right to the INSIDE of the canoe and it will still work great. i dont actually have a vex, i have a marcum, maybe not as nice, but still damn good. and when i bought it, less then half price of the vex. they jacked the price this past winter. might be able to pick up a nice used one on the bay, and check that www.lake-link.com trading post board as i have seen them on there also.
next time i go into the BWCA im going to rig up the marcum on my canoe, or kayak, what even we take. when we were up there on our honeymoon, we were in 200+ FOW alot of the time and i really wished i had a way to find a deep hump and jig for some of the jumbo lake trout that are up there. plus it was impossible to tell where its still fairly shallow, and might be able to troll up some walleyes. water was stained and vis was about 6 feet max, so it was just a guessing game, and i guessed poorly, well at the fishing anyway, like i said, honeymoon!
bacon

[shadrap712]

The only down fall for running a flasher is on steep break lines. Your flasher will read the first thing the cone hits. So your depth maybe off by 10 - 20' sometimes.

[sfw1960]

HB??

I used to be a devout Lowrance guy for 20+ years - I am waiting for my "DBK2" kit to arrive so I can make my HB 798ci SI portable so I can use it on the ice (dual beam only)...
I ran a 787 for a year and upgraded to the 797c2SI with side and down imaging. HB is a division of S.C. Johnson Wax , so they know all about good customer support & relations.


The 300 series would be great on any conoe or kayak.

Robert

[Tom]

hummingbird have this thing called a smartcast. It is basically a castable fish finder. You can also get ones with a screen that attaches to your rod, and i have been looking into buying one of these for a while now. The lake i fish most is about 29 feet deep (there are depth charts for it online), and is about 150yrds wide, and 300yrds long. The pike in there are very big, and they get big by constantly following a huge shoal of roach around the lake, therefore getting a constant supply of food. The shoal of roach move around the whole lake, so obviously a fish finder would be great for locating the whereabouts, and depth of these fish. I don't own a boat, and even if i did its still against the club rules to use it on the lake, so a smartcast is the only real option for me.

[eloosecannon]

I have the smartcast and I love it. The screen attaches to your rod and it gives you the water temperature, depth, and even shows heavy weed cover. It has a backlit screen for night fishing and you can put the sensor on the night fishing setting and it has a light that flashes on it so you can keep track of where you're at. The only down side is that it's not really clear when it shows the fish, you can't always tell the size of the fish very well. Other than that it's great, you can find it at Bass Pro for around $90.

[jmcfish10101973]

i got a bottom line fishing buddy and it works great on my little boat i use on a small creek i fish for bass and trout john..