On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 17:38:12 GMT, "TC" wrote:

I have read quite a bit about this and quite honestly, there's a lot of
info out there. I plan to fish offshore - 40% , inshore - 55% and some
lake - 5%. I live in central Florida. I would like something that
looks below the boat as well as range outside of the boat.

The boat is 18' 6" CC. I would like something fairly inexpensive, and
of good quality. I don't need tons of bells and whistles, however, it
will be on this boat for at least 3-5 years.

Looking directly below the boat would require shooting through the
hull and that may be problematic in your case - you may not have
access to a hatch which will allow you to place a transducer puck in
the appropriate spot, never mind running the cable. Shooting through
the hull has advantages and disadvantages - more the later than the
former (unless you want to drill a hole in your hull and epoxy in a
transducer).

I have through the hull on my Ranger and believe it or not, hang
transducers off the stern of my Contender. The stern hung transducers
beat the hell out of the through the hull transducers. Identical
display/transmitter units I might add.

The real use of a finder/sonar is to see what structure is on the
bottom, bait balls and not necessarily to "find fish". Nine times out
of ten, what you are seeing even in a through hull situation is not
real time - you are about one to two seconds behind what the display
is showing. It can help with trolling situations because it can tell
you if something is coming up, but if you are just looking for
structure to fish, you are WAY behind the real time situation.

With respect to gray screen or color - color hands down. I was pretty
used to gray screen and could really tweak it, but the color screens
are just in a whole other universe. With the new digital signal
processing and computing power in these new machines, it is amazing
what you can discriminate out of any particular bottom, structure or
target species.

In either case, what you want to do is get a dual frequency transducer
and a display/transmitter that will allow you to do split screen and
split frequencies

Garmin (not one of my favorite manufacturers), Lowrance and Raymarine
all make good sounders in the $300/600 dollar range that will serve
you well. I have Raymarine color finders, but I have used Lowrance
and have never been disappointed. I feel that the Lowrance finders
are a better bang-per-buck than Garmin and in my experience, not
shared by others I might add just to be fair, Garmin service sucks -
big time.

Good luck and if you have a specific question(s), ask away.

Later,

Tom
-----------
"Angling may be said to be so
like the mathematics that it
can never be fully learnt..."

Izaak Walton "The Compleat Angler", 1653