Re: Simple "work horse" fish finder?
If you have no need to mark and locate fish, mark and locate underwater structure (channels, dropoffs, reefs, high spots, marine growth, ect) a simple digital depth finder will do.
It gives you a read out of the depth under the boat..end of story.
If you want to follow the contours of the seabed (lakebed, riverbed) with a "picture" of those bottom contours displayed on a LCD screen, then a more elaborate unit will be required.
Elaborate can take the form of a $99 Hummingbird to a multi thousand dollar Furuno unit.
The differences are basically power output and what is displayed on the screen and at what resolution. In this case, pixels are what makes the unit come to life and "draw" objects under the beam of the transducer.
This "beam" is actually a pulse of sound that goes from the transducer to the bottom of the seabed and back to the transducer and "read" by the software, which then interprets these signals and calculates the depth, with the time it takes to bounce back from the bottom.
These beams of sound emit in, what is called a "cone".....because as the pulse comes out of the transducer, on it's way to the seabed, it forms a cone shaped beam.
The deeper the seabed, the larger the cone becomes, and hence, the greater area it will "read"
So if you happen to be running in shallow water (10' or so) the bottom area covered is going to be very small.
By just idling along, with the machine on and set to the correct depth your in, what you see on the screen is immediately below the transducer face.(which is normally mounted towards the rear of the boat)
By the time you recognize this and put the boat in neutral, that area you first saw on the screen is well behind the boat.
Spend sometime looking at the various models and your price maximum.
Google will truly be your friend here.
There are literally millions of articles and how to's on the internet.
Power is a primary concern for a quality unit.
The more power, the deeper the unit will display the bottom clearly and discriminate between objects.
Many fish finders list their power as "peak to peak"....a more reliable power measurement is called "RMS" and any potential buyer of a quality FF should look for that, rather than "peak to peak"
As an example, Furuno lists their least expensive ($300 clams) model as 300 watts RMS power.
On the other end of the quality spectrum, a entry Hummingbird could be one third of that power rating.....and at one third the price.
For your use, a less expensive fish finder should fill the bill just fine. If no fishing or bottom contours are required, a simple digital unit should do you ok.
If and when you want more power, more resolution and advanced software, then the Furuno units are the choice of serious offshore anglers, commercial fishermen and commercial shipping.
