Really, all I want is depth, and temperature.

Ideas?

Garmin Striker 4 about $130 works well for me

Thank you kindly Sir.

Almost anything will give you that. Depending on what you do you should consider GPS and mapping, along with down and sidescan. The GPS with maps is a great asset on new water and water of any significant size.

Agreed. I have seen different clients running with those this year and they sure work well and they seem very easy to use. This based on what I saw, I use something else.

Osky

Here it is.

If I were you would go no less than 7" screen look at Humminbird, Lowrance & Garmin. I have used all 3 with different size screens. Finally decided to go bigger now have 2 Humminbird 10" SI & DI units networked together happy with this setup.





































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I have a low end Lowrance and a better Garmin.The lowrance will show your bait falling to the bottom and show fish. Fish finders have really improved.
Even the low end ones give good images and lots of information.

Richard—I have that Garmin Striker 4 on a 16ft pontoon I use for walleye on a small inland lake. It works very well although I don’t really use the gps aspect very much.
On my 25ft pontoon for Lakers on Lake Nipigon I have helix 7 Hummingbird and Solix 15 with Mag 10 Cannon downriggers

👍

I believe this is truth

There is lots of very good stuff
Simrad Lowrance Hummingbird and Garmin

Hank

My Lowrance and Humminbird both puked out, so now I'm into a Garmin and so far so good. None of my Garmin GPS units have given me problems, so I bought their graph. The problem with the fish finders is that the technology is changing so fast, that a few year old graph is obsolete and no repair parts are available.

Anybody used this at all?



https://www.amazon.com/Deeper-Smart-Sonar-PRO-Portable/dp/B01CQLVO5U

How’s this compare to what you guys are taking about?

I have NO experience with any of these gadgets.

I’ve gotten accustomed to having a chart plotter and imaging capability. I mostly use the chart to eliminate water that I don’t intend to fish. I also use it to make myself aware of shipping lanes.

The scan/imaging capability is great for finding structure. It’s a cool feature and handy, but not essential.

No, all you want is not depth and temp. Fishing Wabigoon and other similar lakes up there you need GPS and down image as well as a minimum, There are lots of times when the walleyes move off the feeding structure and disperse out onto the surrounding flats and they can spread out pretty widely and are often very actively feeding. Most of the places that you learn to catch walleyes up there are rock piles in like 20 feet of water, or flats surrounded by shallower good feeding habitat. I have learned that one of the things they do when they move off those rock piles is to cruise the flats looking for crayfish. Molting crayfish in particular. The can spread out up to 1/2 mile away and being able to mark them with a GPS helps put you back onto them as you drift.

Also, the down image or side image units will help you make sense of where those big smallies go when they are not up on the shallow benches hunting molting crayfish.

Finding walleyes with a fish finder is maybe more difficult when they are shallow. But... they usually move a little deeper in the middle of the day and spotting them then is much easier and the down/side image can be very helpful.

Get GPS and down or side image and learn to use them together with conventional sonar. I keep all three on my screen at once most of the time, and it really does help a lot in places where I'd not thought it could possibly be useful.

One of my better buys for walleye fishing was to get a 90 degree transducer. The one that came with the unit worked fine in deep water for salmon, but walleyes were in water less than 15’ where I fished for them and that wider 90 degree transducer beam meant that if I was over 10 of water, I was reading 10’ of the bottom. Recomended.

Do you ever fish walleyes on Nipigon?

I fish walleye on Nipigon all the time. MNR zero-rated the commercial harvest 20 years ago—walleye have increased dramatically. Trolling count-down Raps or twister tails in river and river-mouths—don’t much need a depth sounder for that.

Get a finder that has a GPS and mapping. The new technology is pretty amazing.