Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Looking For A Fish Locator

So I'm looking for a new fish finder and I need side scan sonar, I look at new and DAMN, They're proud of them so I go looking at used, I don't mind buying used but it had be a dang good discount.

No discounts to be had, everyone wants within 100.00 or less of new price. The ones I really get a kick out of is the ones that have just the display head, no power cord or transducer. Their excuse, "I sold the boat with the wiring in it"..........Yeah sure you fugging thief!

I ended up ordering a Garmin Striker Vivid 7SV, anyone have one? How do you like it?

A local place takes older systems in on trade for the latest and greatest systems from diehards and younger guys that have to have the newest systems for bragging rights. Can often find a decent older unit for reasonable price.

We have a Garmin, it's at the cabin. It works well.

We have a Garmin, it's at the cabin. It works well.

I have a garmin vivid, I mean it works OK - I wish its range away from the boat was better but its good at depths

I don't expect alot from a $200 fish finder though

probably doesn't help that I just use a big clip to hang the transducer off the side of the boat.

A lot of the upgrade is in the transducer/array...
Course they keep changing thins so it is not easy to swap arrays..

No experience with that head unit, but Garmin makes good stuff.


Understand cost gets progressively more unpalatable as screen size increases, but personally I want at least a 9" head unit for side scan anymore. 7" gets pretty crowded/harder to pick out detail on. JMO.

From what i understand you want to use the Side view (aka:side scan) for shallow waters and the Down view (aka: Down scan) for deeper waters. In Down view mode the picture is as wide as the depth of the water, in other word if you depth is 10 feet your scan will be 10 feet wide. In Side view mode your boat is the center line and the center of the scan will be blank as the scan goes out at an angle from the transducer so the width of the blank spot will be equal to the depth on each side of the center line, in other words if the depth is 10 foot the blank spot will be 10 foot each side of the center line.

I hope i didn't mud that up to bad for you.

I need the side scan as I'm looking for some stuff in a river so shallow waters.

Yeah, I couldn't stomach the price of the 9 inch unit.

Way back when I was SCUBA diving(1980's) I wanted a Side Scan Sonar unit so bad I could taste it, the cost was north of $10 grand in those days, no way in hell I could afford that. these fishing units are probably better than that 10,000 dollar unit back then.

The technology has come a long ways since then.

For Freshwater and basic lake fishing any of the big 3….Hummingbird, Garmin or Lowarance will do everything. I’m not a big lake fisherman or Hummingbird guy but I have fished with guys that are using the new Hummingbird units with down scan and side view technology and the new Hummingbird units are nice! I won’t touch another Lowrance after seeing at least 8 newer finders bite the dust after only a few uses. For me I’ve always run Garmin finders-plotters-gps and I like them a lot. They’re intuitive and simple to use. They don’t have a bunch of tiny buttons that you’re trying to tap underway while bouncing around and they’re easy to learn.

For the big boat I’m settled on the Raymarine touch screen. I need a unit in the flybridge as well as the main helm station and I want 1 unit for depth-chart plotting-GPS-radar so everything overlays on a large touchscreen. Deep saltwater fishing and needing more than a fish finder for navigating-radar-gps is where it can get more involved. If you just want a good fish finder it’s pretty hard to go wrong with the big names in the $200-$500 range. I put a little Hummingbird fish finder in my skiff mostly just for a depth reading and bottom contours when dropping pots. It’s worked perfectly fine for years now and it was around $100 new with the transducer….it’s nothing fancy and it only has 240p but it does everything I need.

yea, seldom am I in anything deeper than 20 feet

Downscan is for below the boat,
Side scan is for out on the sides,
Downscan, depending on units is generaly around a 5/1 ratio, there are no units that I know of, that give a 1/1 ratio on depth/display.

Side scan can be very handy, at times a game changer.

I bought a couple years ago, Lowrance. Honestly I must need to spend more time with it, the side scan hasn't done much for me at all so far. I hope you get good results from yours. I didn't over pay but I'm not real happy with it.

Live Scope or bust

I look at the prices on the fancy electronics whenever I wander through the store and think, wow, I'm lucky that I have skill and don't have to pay for junk like that.

I have Garmin and Lowrance. Garmin is easier. You just turn it on and use a.touch screen to navigate. The.Lowrance is good but harder to figure out.

I rely on blind ass luck.

I've seen hightec fish-finders that may have cost $50,000, that's a Lot of fish!

I just picked up a cheap Garmin Stiker 4 for ice fishing. Most of my open water fishing doesn’t require one on the rivers. I may try to do some vertical jogging for lakers next summer though. I’m no help on the higher end equipment unfortunately.