down vu and side vu transducers?

J

jkswor

New member
Do a lot of halibut and salmon fishing out of valdez alaska in depths from shallow to 400 ft or so. also do shrimp pots in depths up to 450 or so.
Was thinking about a garmin gvc 10 and down vu/side vu transducer.
Anyone see an advantage to the side vu technology for ocean fishing? or a waste of money.

thanks in advance
Jim
 
jkswor":2q8c4pvo said:
Do a lot of halibut and salmon fishing out of valdez alaska in depths from shallow to 400 ft or so. also do shrimp pots in depths up to 450 or so.
Was thinking about a garmin gvc 10 and down vu/side vu transducer.
Anyone see an advantage to the side vu technology for ocean fishing? or a waste of money.

thanks in advance
Jim
Click to expand...




Side view is great down to 100" or so.
Down view 200" or so. The 77/200 however is great to 800 or so. I use my garmin to place pots on a ledge/ rock pile in 6-800" in PWS.

:wink:
 
I was curious about the many choices in transducers and " chirp " sonar units as well, it seems to me all the big names in sonar/gps manufacturers have latched onto the chirp term trying to profit from the technology. My question is area these "chirp" units even anything like the original navy chirp sonar units with the power to perform at extreme depth with great detail like they were intended to. I see a lot of 250 watt 500 watt transducers that must have fairly limited useful range in saltwater. Do we need to spend some cash for 1000-2000 watt transducers to truly get the detail at depth that we want?
 
Take a look at the 7" "Stryker" series by Garmin, 7 sv. Has both side view and down view (No GPS mapping however, just traces. The frequency range is 455 and 800 kHz, with 500 watts. That is going to bed shallow water, in the several hundred feet range. If you want the deeper, you want CHIRP in the transducer and sounder which woks in the 50khz range. The best detail in 100 to 200 feet probably will be with the 800 khz range.

There are some pretty good scans in the less than 500 feet range with the lower power. You can hit the bottom in deep depths, with 500 watts, but if you want good details there you have to go up in wattage, and the more expensive transducer.
 
I'm a huge fan of side imaging. However, I do a different type of fishing. The waters I'm in are typically 20-40' deep, and/or I'm fishing bridges (specifically the Skyway Bridge) in Tampa.

We use SI to eliminate nonproductive water and treat fishing more like hunting. We're often prowling around more than just sitting.

Some folks are of the mindset that fish will just pop out and you'll clearly see them. It's not how it generally works - individual fish are very hard to see. Schools are much easier.

Scanning distance affects what's on the screen and you only have some much real estate to work with - buy the biggest screen you an afford. If I could afford a 12" screen I would buy it; if you get anything less than 7" you'll probably regret it. Fish are REALLY small on that size screen - it'll be just a small blip.

Fortunately we tend to fish for Tarpon which are about 5'-7' long - but even then they are just a blip. When you find a big scool of them they are hard to miss - each blip below is a 6' poon. Probably 150-200 fish. We were literally on top of those fish - the water which is normally teal was black - and it was in fact awesome. Normally we do not find pods like this. 6-10 is more in line.

Bottom line - it's good stuff; buy the biggest screen you can afford. Sorry I can't help you on depth. We tend to fish "skinny" stuff.

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Then get you some of this...

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Neglected to add...a friend has the Lowrance HDS 9 Gen 3 and it's a pretty darn nice tool. Again bigger would be better - 12" if you can afford it.

You're going to pay for it though.

I bought my Humminbird about 3-4 years ago for $800 or so.

The Lowrance is about $2K, but very expandable. I'll probably have to wait until those go on sale in a couple years. 12" will be another $1K.
 
I fish Cordova, and was asking the same questions. I decided to go for the Lowrance equivalent for several reasons. First, the ability to map local areas in great detail to find structure. This was a big help, but sort of just confirmed the spots I had already found (I haven't gone out searching for new spots yet).

It works well at low speeds in deep water and the newest version will give you a very very very accurate rendering of the structure you have mapped in a 3d environment you can "swim" through. It's cool.

It finds salmon schools very well, and herring, and for areas near glaciers that change a lot, you can scan around and know where the channels are (more important on the flats near me than the fjords near you). It's pretty cool to see a whale on there, although they don't always look right.

If I were to grab a garmin rig right now I'd be looking for a panoptix. It's the future. I think other companies will have similar sonar soon as well. I believe that many down/side vu units will accommodate panoptix as well, and you should be able to get down/side vu and add panoptix later.

Buts are in early this year! Get out there!!!
 
Wow, cant get the boat out yet. Still have a foot or so of snow here in Tok.
But will get out as soon as I can. Thanks, cant wait
Jim
 
I like the side scan when going after salmon so I know where the bait balls are in relation to the boat. With a traditional downview, all you know is that the fish is somewhere in the cone.

CHIRP is another thing. I believe it is worth it to get and use. The great thing about chirp is that it relies less on power output and more on the bandwidth of the transmitted signal. Obviously higher output power enables you to overcome the effects of two way transmission loss, but a 500W chirp will give you the same target seperation as a 1000W chirp assuming all other parameters are equal.

Tom, I'm liking the initial looks of the panoptix, but the jury is still out until I can get an on water test of it. All the ads show it being used in very shallow water, which makes sense given the 120 degree cone angle. If you tried to use that in deeper water, I'm afraid the loss due to to the width of the cone angle would be too much.

If you have questions, feel free to pm or give me a call. If you want to see my seminar in person, come on down to the Puget Sound Boat Show March 17-20th. I will be doing one show/day and the times vary. Its an interactive seminar with a TON of information.
 
Steve we have to get together soon about what I want in a new system.

If any of you have not seen stevens presentation on sonar and how to better use it you should go. I have seen it twice and its worth doing. We should see about having him do it at friday harbor hint hint.
 
Tom, Great link. I LIKE that Panoptix where you can see forward. Super for my kind of fishing, (aka gunk holing) What a great, and finallly about time, idea.

I'm going out on a limb here, but just thinking it won't probably match up to my RayMarine C-120 Classic :cry :twisted:

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

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Maybe a session on the party float Friday Evening? We could park our boat nearby and bring a Tablet wifi connected to the Garmin that your could run from there or just do it on the dock nearby. Would have to be long or formal at all.

We are open to the idea,

Greg
 
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