Re: looking to buy a good fish finder
fish finders are great when you pretty much have found fish, in the sence that there are miles of nothing and the fish finder just reflects back what you just went over. great tool to have to find structure to fish or when you know here the fish will be like over a hump to see how deep they are holding. But if your are serious about fishing for off shore fish such as tuna or any other pelagic radar is almost a must. tuna chase bait fish balling them up and push them to the surface and the birds are above waiting for their chance. read many articles of even a single bird far off shore indicating where fish were, some times a single bird will follow a lone pelagic like a marlin knowing it is a matter of time before that fish brings dinner to the surface for the bird, and of course a flock of birds will be on a school of fish busting on the surface. you would never see those birds several miles away with out radar to pick them up. you could be looking for fish driving one direction and not even know there is a hot blitz going on a few miles away at a slightly different heading and you would miss the action. if you are not going to add radar right now make sure the finder you get has the ability to add one later. when you think about the price of fuel now and how far you have to run some days to get to the fishing grounds the last thing you want to do is cruse around burning fuel looking for fish, the cost of a radar will hurt at the time of purchase but will pay for it self 10 time over with how much it will save you in fuel! I had a garmin unit and it was great, i now have a Lowrance and i love it. The better known brands are all going to preform well it mostly comes down to personal prefrence of which brand, some guys will only run Lowrance, some Garmin...you get the idea (ford/chevy). go to a bass pro or some where they have several units on display and play with a few to see which is more user friendly for you and which unit has the screen lay out the way you like.
