portable fish finders for fly-inns

[GregN]

I'll be doing my first fly-inn this summer to Northwestern Ontario and I am considering purchasing the Bottomline Fishin Buddy portable fish finder. I like the idea of it being "one unit" with the transducer built in as opposed to other portable units that require running a wire to a suction cup mounted transducer.

Does anyone have any experience with these units? How do they work?

Thanks,
Greg

I have owned one for about 5 years now . I use it in my belly boat. they work great! If your using it in a boat remember to pull it out of the water before you take off at any great speed or you will loose your unit or damage it. If you're going for a long period of time take extra batteries.Try your unit out before you leave. The 1st one I bought was faulty and I did't find out till I was on the water! Other than that it has served me well. It's starting to warm up here finaly and the lakes are starting to clear.It has been a very dry spring . Hope you have a good time up here.

[Vitreum]

i used one last year on lac seul and it served me well. have used it all this spring for crappie fishing. works fine. it does get confused about deep bottom weedbeds, thinks they are fish. i've had lots of fish finders in my day and i would rate this one ok. it should serve your needs. batteries last a long time. supposedly 40 hours if not using the lighted screen. i have the cheapie; 1200 i think.

Been using a cheap bottomline for my flyin for 4 years. Does a good job of finding the bottom and reading general fish schools. It is a great light weight inexpensive tool. I wouldn't say it compares to some of the $1000+ units but it works very well on flyins. I fish 12 hours or so a day and start with a fresh set of batteries and change mid week. By the end of the week I am ready to change again. Figure 25-35 hours per battery set.

Bob

A thought on batteries...I went to the Interstate Battery store and bought a rechargeable 12v battery for my finder before I flew out. This will last all week and then some on my Garmin 100, and it powers my GPS with a power splitter. Look at your finder instructions, most of the finders are designed to take either kind of battery, one big one or a lot of little ones.

[TEK]

I have an old Green Box that I got many years ago. Still works fine and got the job done. I also took a hand held GPS that worked out well.

I flew in to a lodge 7 years ago with a bottom line fishin' buddy. The lodge we were at gave us a map but it didn't have lake depths. It only had the outline of the lake. The problem with the fishin' buddy was that you couldn't use it while moving, so I couldn't find many of the humps and breaks for walleye fishing.

2 years ago we went back to the same lodge. This time I had a portable fish finder with the suction cup transducer. I was able to use it while moving from spot to spot. We were able to fing a lot of nice spots I never would have located with the fishin' buddy.

Don't get me wrong. I still have the bottom line and there are times where I prefer it, but for my fly-in the newer portable has been much better for me. I don't think cost is that much of an issue. You can get an Eagle FishEasy 2 for about the same price as the fishin' buddy I believe.

Just my opinion. Hope this helps

Adam

[Dave]

Greg:
We use Eagle portables that work fine. Sitting in a 14 -16' Naden with a 9.9 Yammie makes it easy to fish and read the Eagle. Plus you can position it so the guy in front can see it at a glance. One set of fresh batteries lasts all week, we average 12 hours/day on the water.

Check into or look for a Vexilar "boundry waters" unit. I replaced
my old portable Hummingbird with this unit and love it. It has a very
small footprint - very light and marks great. Best of all it is
self contained and runs all week on 8 AA batteries - hence the small
footprint. Great unit - highly recomend. Get a nice hand held GPS.
They really help re-finding hot spots and structure.

[bigfish1965]

Also had an Eagle ( Lowrance) portable. Great unit. When I bought my boat, I attached the transducer to the front trolling motor and it became permanent. Works better than the bigger rear unit most days.