Fish finder help- deep water small boat
Printed From: The Fishing Website
Category: General Forums
Forum Name: The Boat Shed
Forum Description: Discuss all things boating.
URL: https://www.fishing.net.nz/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=138089
Printed Date: 06 Jun 2026 at 2:20am
Topic: Fish finder help- deep water small boat
Posted By: RobHG
Subject: Fish finder help- deep water small boat
Date Posted: 12 Dec 2023 at 10:52am
|
Hi all. I couldn't find any recent post, or I'm **** on the search feature, but technology moves do fast I bet there are new options now. I'm looking to upgrade the finder. Currently an Elite 4 that came with the boat (smartwave3500) 60% of my fishing willbe in shallow water as I'm based in Timaru 😞. But I will get to kaikoura and Jackson's bay a wee bit when weathers perfect. Was at Kaikoura last weekend and very quickly lost the bottom. I'd like to be able to mark the bottom at 800m and ideally fish at 600m or a little further. Mainly I'll be fishing in the 300-400m range though. But think ts good to over do it a little. Being able to see a wide area/ sidescan would be great for the shallows 10-60m. There are just so many options. Hoping to keep the budget under the 3k range. I'm also in no huge hurry and don't mind used gear if it's a good deal. Cheers Rob |
Replies:
Posted By: smudge
Date Posted: 12 Dec 2023 at 11:06am
|
Hi Rob. I think that would be a big ask for that budget. You would need a pretty good transducer to read that deep and of course a fishfinder to match. I don't have the product knowledge to help you out, so hopefully someone else can help ------------- Best gurnard fisherman in my street |
Posted By: RobHG
Date Posted: 12 Dec 2023 at 11:09am
| Also I'm confused why you'd want a wide angle in deep water and narrow beam in shallow water. I'd have thought the opposite would be better. |
Posted By: RobHG
Date Posted: 12 Dec 2023 at 11:10am
I could go over 3k. Just have to sell more hunting gear. 😀 |
smudge wrote:Posted By: BotStomper
Date Posted: 13 Dec 2023 at 11:51am
|
You need a sounder unit with true 1kw output. The cheapest you're likely to get there is something like a Lowrance Elite FS 7, or maybe a Furuno FCV-588 if you don't mind keeping the Elite 4 for charting. The boat we fish off in Kaikoura has a TM258 transducer, which the Low frequency (50khz) has marked bottom as deep as 700 on a very old, albeit 1kw, headunit (Lowrance LCX) and will show the bait layer when you're fishing for Bluenose in 400. The performance is markedly less good than a modern CHIRP transducer and sounder unit, though. The ideal would be a TM275LH-W, with the high-wide for shallow work. Expensive transducer though, and getting a unit that will do dual channel CHIRP at 1kw to make the most of it would blow your budget to pieces. You could maybe get away with a TM185M which is 1kw CHIRP from something like 85-135khz, these provide exceptional performance from maybe 60-150m and very decent from 0-300m, I've never used one past those depths though so can't speak to how it goes beyond that. Anything better than just marking bottom beyond 500m is the territory of super-low frequency, 2kw+ commercial style transducers like a R109 or R209, which require something like an FCV295 or dedicated sounder module to run, and all of a sudden you're into 5 figures for your fishfinding setup. Have a look at this thread on another forum: https://www.thehulltruth.com/marine-electronics-forum/953869-help-airmar-tm260-vs-tm185m-deep-dropping.html" rel="nofollow - https://www.thehulltruth.com/marine-electronics-forum/953869-help-airmar-tm260-vs-tm185m-deep-dropping.html There are some interesting screenshots there for the TM185M - the first one is getting a great bottom image and even marking fish in >500m, but it is important to note that it is connected via a S5100 module there so will be getting the best possible performance. The screenshot in post #8 shows it directly connected to a headunit, and you can see the quality of the return starts to drop off considerably beyond ~1300ft/400m.
|