Shallow Water Fishfinder

[rcouret]

What are few good shallow water fishfinders. Say under 20' of water or less?

[Sandpiper John]

Furuno 600L

[Reel-Rascals]

With all due respect to the poster and to Furuno, I don't believe ANY of their units will display much below 2-3'. A few of us purchased the Furuno LS6100 and we all returned them as they won't display any depth once below that 3-4' threshold. Furuno even admitted to never testing these in shallow waters . I agree that the 600L and 6100 are super deep water machines though !

I'd recommend you take a look at the Humminbird Matrix line or the Eagle Fishmark 320s if you only want to spend about $160 or so. Both of these will reliably read to 1' or less below the transducer face. And you won't need any dual frequency machine in waters that deep either.

Just so I don't get slammed ... I boat on New England tidal estuaries where the mud is dark brown to black. when leaving the docks early in the morning, there's NO WAY one can lok overboard and estimate the water's depth. With 9+ feet of tidal change ... we need shallow water capabilities, as the bards are always shoaling and changing.

[Sandpiper John]

Reel-Rascals
I have a 582L, and it marks bait and fish with no problem in 5 to 15 foot of water in the bay and tidal waters in my area. I also have a few shallow spots I have to cross in the bay to get to the inlet and my machine reads down to 2' ( thats 2' of water under the xducer ) with no problem. I think alot has to do with the proper adjustment of the gain and how well the transducer was mounted.

[rcouret]

Reel-Rascals, Looking at similar conditions. The 320 looks as it will fit the bill. Do you think it's worth the additional $50 to go to the 480 just to increase the resolution from 320x320 to 480x480 (with amber LED backlit screen)? Do you know if the amber Led screen helps viewing in bright sun light? rcouret

[Reel-Rascals]

rcouret:

For those needs of both extreme shallow water capabilities and excellent viewing in direct sunlight, IMHO I'd go with a Humminbird unit. I just bought the Matrix 27, with water temp, from Broken Leg Dave (www.brokenlegdave.com) for $221 (arrived 2 days later) and it has 340 wide by 640 tall resolution.

In my experience, the H'birds have better screen viewability than the Eagles in direct sunlight and much better noise rejection. The display on the Eagle would be different depending on whether I was running with the current or against it. I never had that problem with any of the H'bird units showing excessive screen "clutter".

Another subtle point, the Eagle depth readout displays to the 1/10th of a foot reading, so the readout is always flashing from 10.2 to 10.4 to 10.3, etc. ... rapidly, and I found that extremely ANNOYING . The H'birds display the depth to the whole number.

Once last comment on the Eagle Fishmark 320, I did not care for its backlighting and that's really why I replaced it. For that amber backlight to work, it had to be on FULL bright and I found it blinded my helm at night ... but your opinion/application could very well be different. With all that said, it did have incredible screen resolution(though a bit "noisy" with clutter) for a unit that now sells for $160 or so.

FYI - If you want to "test drive" any of the Eagle machines, you can download an emulator, click here: that loads a simulated depth machine onto your computer. Extreme fun to play with, just like using one :grin , but like a real unit, one must hold your cursor on the power button for 2-3 seconds to get it to shut off. When I downloaded it (at work!), my boss came into my office and I couldn't shut the darn thing off (had to download the instructions) !

[Big E]

I have to agree with Sandpiper John. I have a Navnet (equiv to 582) and routinely travel in areas between 3 and 4 feet. If the water has been stirred up by a another boat's prop wash, I will not see bottom graphically, but the digital reading will show me numbers like 2.1 feet 2.5, etc. That would be the distance between by through hull ducer and the bottom. Once I go shallower than 2 feet, it is lost but that's usually because I'm dragging!

I have to assume that all you guys are concerned about is avoiding the sand bars and such. A flasher or digital depth finder (NOT a FISH Finder) is what you need in those cases.

I don't think any make of FISH FINDER is going to wotk well in shallow water if you are trying to find fish. In those shallows and with the "flooding" signals that are bounced back, it would be hard for the equipment to interpret the bottom returns with anything swimming off the bottom.

Gain, sensitivity and clutter adjustments need to be made to have a "deep Water" depth finder work in shallow areas.

[Reel-Rascals]

I don't think any make of FISH FINDER is going to work well in shallow water if you are trying to find fish.

I disagree completely ... but respectfully too !

That's why I recommended the H'Bird units. I have successfuly calibrated them, when over schools of bass, mackerel, and menhaden (pogies/bunker) to where the unit can successfully discriminate between small fish (macks & pogies), medium fish (bass to 12-18 pounds) and larger fish (bass over 20 pounds).

I used to leave my unit to only alarm on "large" fish, or else the alarm would be going off all the time on the bunker and smaller bass. But underneath them, would be the BIG bass. There's one rip where I fish, that if/when the bunker are in and one can obtain them for live bait, when that alarm for large fish goes off ... BANG ... bass on the hook over 20 pounds. Every time !

Now granted ... the deepest I'll fish is probably 80' and most is done in 40' or less. If, like you others posted, I really needed a deep machine ... you bet I'd be running a Furuno or Simrad machine. But they do not reliably display to 2 or less below the transducer face and that's a capability I require. I fully respect others opinion for Furuno machines and hope you respect mine/ours for an admittedly and selective shallow water use.

Cheers

[Big E]

I do respect your specific needs.
I also should add, that in the sentence that you quoted me on, the word shallow was meant to imply UNDER 5 feet! Not 40 or 20 and not even 10, because at those depths the FURUNO can and does descriminate pods of bait or single fish of varying sizes with certain gain and clutter adjustments. Just no fishy pix ,and I can't stand alarms unless they are to tell me that I am going to ground or blow an engine!

[frankr]

reel-rascals: what do you think of that new hummer 640 v. screen resolution? have you had the opportunity to use it much? what is the deepest water in which you have used it? i've thought about the 37 with the quad xducer or the 67, but don't know anything about their chartplotting other than they use navionics xL3 gold chips-(in retrospect, the 5" screen would be awfull small to split).
i've looked at the 582l f. but with 320v. pixels, the screen resolution looks very blocky. the display hummers had quite a bit of glare, but unfortunately, they were last year's models (25, 35, etc.). don't know if newer models have better glare control. ???

thanks, frank.

[Harpoon]

The guys from Southern LA should have good recomendations on shallow water machines.