New Raymarine Digital FF Owners

[DarrellC]

I need a new ff. Replacing a Lowrance unit that came on boat. I bottom fish from 30' to 200' primarily, in the Gulf, and trolling out to much deeper areas as well. I love a friends Furuno 582, but am intrigued by the new Raymarine FF's. I have one question I cannot answer looking at the manuals. Can you select the depth range to view only a 20-30' range, or are you limited to the ZOOM function of 2X 4X, etc...? On the 582 you can "shift" your upper limit down manually, and on my Lowrance you can set upper and lower limits. On either machine this gives you the capacity of looking at only a 20-30' range of depths no matter how deep you are fishing. Makes it much easier to find the small breaks, live bottom that I prefer to look for when searching out new areas for grouper. An old Sitex I had would only allow a "zoom" of a maximum of 4X, so 15' at a depth of 60', but 45' at a depth of 180'. That provides two very different pictures, especially when looking for small changes. I hope I've made myself clear, and someone can answer this for me.

BTW, I'm open to any other suggestions.

Thanks,
Darrell

[Sea_Dad]

page 5 - 14 says the HDFI's have range and shift capability, like the furuno does.

http://www.raymarine.com/raymarine/S...81213_1www.pdf

[Harry Brosofsky]

You can set the zoom level (2, 3, 4, or custom), zoom range, and zoom start depth. When out at the rigs last weekend, I had 2X zoom, 400' range, start at surface. That allowed me to look at only the top 400' of the 1800' depth we were in.

Harry

[FreeByrd]

Darrell,
Yes you can do what you are saying. Last summer salmon fishing with my 770D HDFI sonar I looked at specific zoom windows like from 20 to 60 feet for example over 300 feet of water.

The Furuno 582 is no doubt a solid proven unit and I thought hard about buying one, but when you compare it to the resolution, screen viewability and the DIGITAL sonar capability that only Raymarine has it became an easy choice to me. I've been running it for Great Lakes walleye and salmon tournaments where we absolutely depend on our sonar to locate baitfish and the target salmon or walleye over miles and miles of open water. I am sponsored by Raymarine and fish freshwater so take that into account but the HDFI sonar is the real deal.

Steve Carlson

[DarrellC]

Thanks for the replies. I'll have to go play with one in the store, unless I can find someone near who has one installed. None at my marina yet.