New Fishfinder

[Scott McKee]

I searched the couch for change, took some returnable bottles back, sold a bunch of lemonade and broke my piggy bank.  I think I want to purchase a new sonar and while I'm at it I might as well get a GPS built in.  I currently use a Lowrance X-85 and a 12 year old Garmin handheld GPS that draws a line, shows you where north is and little else, so any purchase would be a serious upgrade. What do you have?  Have you had problems?  Any suggestions?  What is the difference between a Lowrance Elite 5 and a Lowrance HDS-5?  I am hopeless.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

[John Jarosz]

Scott...I have the Elite 5 & will post some remarks tomorrow (Sunday).  Getting rigs ready right now to take my nieces husband & their two boys fishing for 'eyes and bass Sunday.  If the kids are lucky (8 & 11), they'll accidentally hook a musky, cr*p their pants, & we'll get a couple of junior members in for life.  I've had the Elite 5 for two years now & happy with it.  Worth every penny.  Will post more later.  Looked at the DSL (?) & wasn't impressed.  BTW, I still have some graph paper left from the old paper ones.  Interested (?)..jj

[John Jarosz]

scott...here is my take on my Elite 5.  I was positively BEAT yesterday after fishing with the kids all day so didn't have a chance to answer back.  BTW, zip at the departure buoy.  Other guys were saying that last week everybody was getting the 'eyes.  One guy told me that he got 17 in one day & he's never caught 17 fish in his life.  When he ran out of crawlers, he threw a Rapala on & was catching them on that.  yesterday, even the diehards from last week got nothing.  I guess I shoulda' been there last week (the story of my life!!!)

Anyway, back to the Elite 5:

I have a basic model, not the Elite 5 DSI.  The DSI is "down-scanning-imaging."  It's supposed to show submerged trees, weeds, stolen cars off the ft of Ontario, and anything else that might be down there.  All it does is interpret signal strength to make an image.  It doesn't really "see" things down there like a camera.

My preference is to interpret those things myself.  When I fish the lake, I fish an area, structure, bait fish, etc., not a single sunken Oldsmobile.  I want to get to an area & work that area.

advantages:

1. not a fancy unit & not a lot of frills. The more frills, the more you play with it & the more there is to forget from year to year. I wanted a basic unit.  I tend to use some basic features & ignore the rest.

2. the split screen is nice.  The two screens are split vertically so you can see the map with contour lines on the left screen & the bottom on the right screen.  Some GPS units have the screen split horizontally.

3. It was the largest screen out there that was reasonably priced.  You want to get the largest screen that you can afford.

4. There is a choice of 4 screens; bottom only, map with contour lines only, split screen with map on one side- bottom on other, and a navigation screen.  EZ to go from one screen to another.

5.  The contour lines on the map are nice & will show your boat position to them.  I did notice on mine that contour lines didn't show up on the Niagara River.  I'll play with that in my garage today.

6. For lake use, at least, it's fully useable right out of the box.  You can also buy a "fishing package card" for about $100.  It's supposed to show fishing "hot spots" & supposedly other details.  Since I don't know the River at all, if the card has river contour lines, I might get that, but you know how that goes.  "Hot spots" are hot because of something that draws fish to them.  the Elite 5 will get you back to that spot, though.

7. I like that the Elite 5 will show "tracks", i.e. when I was trolling a certain pattern, like a race-track, you can track back & forth over your old ones if they were successful.

8. The screens display in color.

(WHEW!!)..Now, disadvantages:

1. Sometimes hard to see in bright sunlight, but then again, I wear polarized bifocals out on the lake.  It is easier to see the screen without the polarized, but even then, the display washes out somewhat.  I still need the bifocals to see but that's my eyes.

2. Even though it's a basic unit, it can still do an awful lot.  After not using it the whole winter, I have to "re-learn" some features otherwise I'm fumbling out there trying to get it to do what I want.  Yesterday, I played with it in the garage.

3. The E-Z removable mounting is not real positive.  I've had the unit fall off it's mount a few times when I thought it was on, but once it's on, it's on solidly, sometimes too solidly as it's hard to remove.

4. Even after two years, I'm still learning all the features & that's frustrating, but it's still a pretty basic unit (I like that)

5. Last year I KNOW that I could pick up the U.S./ Canadian border.  This year, in my garage, I can't seem to get the border to show on the screen.  I still haven't figured out what I did to see it before.

I HAVE MINE MOUNTED ON A PORTABLE TRANSOM MOUNT (with clamp). If you want, we can make some arrangements for you to have & use for a while.  My son is visiting here from Md & we're planning on going fishing just about everyday.  He'll be here until August 1st (I think).  You can use it after August 1st or maybe we can go out with you before that & I can show you some stuff with it & you can play around with it.

Call me on my cell & we can make arrangements for you to try for a couple of weeks before purchasing one.

Hope that helps,

JJ

[Scott McKee]

Thanks John!  Tom Page has the Elite 7 and told me pretty much what you wrote.  Sold!

[John Jarosz]

Scott...one other advantage to the GPS unit (any GPS unit) is the transducer itself.  The Elite 5 replaced a Garmin fishfinder that I used for a number of years.  The Garmin had two transducers; one for recording depth & the other a paddle-wheel for speed.  With the Elite, I have one transducer and no paddle-wheel as speed is determined by the GPS.

It was a huge advantage yesterday when we were drifting. A paddle wheel would have shown zero speed since the boat, water, and wheel are all traveling together at the same relative speed. A GPS unit will show the speed of the changing position of the boat as it drifts thru the water, similar to air speed vs. ground speed.

Good luck & save your bottles...jj