fish finder/ flasher

[reinventingyourexit]

I'm looking to buy a fish finder or flasher. I'm new to the electronics of ice fishing. i have never used them. and i want to get something to help me out. whats the difference between fishfinders for boats and for ice? other than price. will one for a boat work? and how do the flashers work? any help will be greatly appreciated. thanks.

[stripernut]

I have posted before;

I don’t spend much money on ice fishing, 1, I am fugal (wife says cheap) and 2, I like to tuna fish and that take most of the little money that I spend on fishing. When I was looking for a portable sounder that I was going to use primarily for open water, I know that I would most likely set it up for ice fishing. So that eliminated most of the “Ice Machines” out there, there is nothing “wrong” with any of them, but for the money they ask for, their use is too limited (for me).  I wanted color if I could find it for the right price. When a good color unit is tweaked out right it can often tell you what species of fish is down there. If you don’t believe me just ask a Captain of a good charter boat for cod or haddock, most of the time cod show up as red and haddock as blue… Spending most of my time on the Ocean (Guiding), instructing boat owner how to use their electronics, I have had the pleasure and frustration of using (then teaching the boat owner, how to use) almost every brand out there. I do have a favorite brand; Raymarine, its abilities blows the socks off of most everything out there, but they no longer make any smaller units. They did for a short time, but they found it was cutting into there sales of their more expensive units so they stopped making them…
I found the Garmin 300C Fish Finder (not the Echo) to have all the features that I was looking for; Color with a high pixel count, a gain that lets me see tiny jigs in 40+ feet of water, a split screen with zoom, a flasher screen if I needed it, but best of all, all for about $200.00.  It does not come or have available from Garmin an “Ice Transducer”, but Ice Shanty is full of ways to get around that. Now that I have used it a number of times, I can say that it performed very well. NO lag what so ever.  I did not get to try it around other user, so I can not speak about interference, but for me that is not a problem. I did on a couple occasions in very shallow water have trouble with the bounce back from the ice, all I needed to do was restart and it went away. Not a real problem for me, I really use a sounder in 4 ft of water, but I was testing the unit out… I use 2 rechargeable 6 volt batteries ($20 total) in series for a total of 9 amps (cheaper than 1, 7 amp 12 volt battery). I tested the batteries for about 18 hour in two day and still had not gotten the batteries below 11.5 volts (unit work down to 10 volts).
It would not be the right unit for every one, but it has almost all the features of units selling for twice the money and will work even better for open water use

[muskyon46]

Very well put stripernut, I have been using my eagle 642igps for my boat and ice. I got the ice ducer for it and it has served me well for the last 3 years and at $350 on a Christmas sale at cabelas it has been great. I have been marking waypoints for years and go back to them in the winter. This year I decided to roll over some money I had from selling some of my grandmothers fishing stuff so I picked up a Marcum LX7 and this thing is sweet. It was a bit pricey but could not have made a better turn around for what it will mean to me when out using it. For a 1st finder I don't think you need to go all out just keep it simple until your ready to upgrade. I like the graph verses the flasher cause if you walk away for a sec and come back atleast you can tell if something came up for a sniff or went thru suspended. JUst have to play with them a bit to get what you want out of them as striper said

[Rspeters]

I agree with what the others have said. Last year I didn't have anything, this year I'm using a circa 1995 fish finder meant for a boat, and although it doesn't have the flasher capabilities, it's nice to see the depth, and see if there's fish there. I just had to build a simple bracket to hold the transducer in the water...it works good enough. 
To me,  it makes a world of difference in my strategy if I know there's fish where I'm at, because then I can eliminate one aspect (the location) and focus on either changing my offerings, or technique, or both. My next step will be a flasher though, and I hope to have that by next year....luckily I didn't have to pay anything for the fishfinder I have now, if I had to pay for something I would probably just fork out the cash for a flasher.

[Hilblee]

I rigged up a fish finder and used it for several years but this year bought a vexilar 18.  Fish 2 holes everywhere and swear I catch 6 to 1 in the hole that has the vexilar!  Awesome to watch the fish come to that little jig and anticipate the bite!

[4x4elk]

Well I have read this post a couple of times and with you living in Utah get on KSL and buy your self a flasher you will be very happy you did. enuff said...

[Crappielover89]

Well I have read this post a couple of times and with you living in Utah get on KSL and buy your self a flasher you will be very happy you did. enuff said...

X2

[mike182]

Lowerance elite 4 ice machine with gps/chart plotter 400 or without the gps 300. cant go wrong

[PACKFAN-UT]

I got one from Santa and I love it.

[Drillguy33]

Cabelas has the lowrance elite 4x for $219 right now free ship to store.

[mike182]

That's a darn good price

[The Don Mega]

I've got the marcum lx6 and love it. It has a nice 6" LCD screen with customized display layouts.  I run a traditional sonar view with a showdown and showdown zoom view all on the same screen. Makes it really easy to see where the fish are in the column and then zoom in on the action. It also gives me about a 10 second history so if I look away I can briefly see what recently occurred. I'll run it for 6-7 hours straight and that eats up about 1/3 of the battery life.

I bought it off eBay and got a great price.

I also run the new vexilar fishphone underwater camera, it's AMAZING!  It broadcast the video to any apple or android phone with their app.  I use my iPad and my kids use their iPhones as the video display.  I have some video I can upload if anyone is interested.