IceShanty.com's Ice Fishing Community
IceShanty Main => General Ice Fishing Chit Chat => Topic started by: tbulhead on Nov 08, 2015, 05:50 AM
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I see on the Garmin website the new Striker units are being marketed as portable fishfinder. The new 7 inch screen with chirp and side imaging looks pretty killer for small boat owners with a $500 price tag and then you get a kit which includes a battery and carrying handle to make it portable for ice fishing.
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https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-water/fishfinders/striker-4-portable-bundle/prod543740.html
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I am a big Garmin fan, but it looks like with no uploading of Digital maps/charts and no base map, this is not a unit for me... I could just buy one of there great sounders and dig up a old Garmin 45 I have somewhere...
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That 4" model looks like a pretty nice unit for the price especially when you consider it has GPS. $119 for the machine or $200 with a battery/charger/soft case/transducer float. I like their cone angles too, a bit better for ice than what you normally get from an open water machine. I do think the optional icedeucer is overpriced though. I could possibly see one of these in my near future.
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glad to see garmin in the ice game. good to see chirp from some one else too. i don't see any thing about IR.
they go all of the way up to 4k$
https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-water/fishfindergpscombos/gpsmap-7612xsv/prod169210.html
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Just found this, and I might be very pleased or sorely disappointed, as I just purchased a striker 5 ice bundle. I have had an fl8 and lx3. I liked things about both units, (I have also had chevy and ford pickup trucks....both positives as well). I'll be sure to keep everything in order in case I think I made a mistake. For what it's worth, I played around at FF with the head unit for a good half hour. Best of luck to you all, and me too.....
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Update.... My unit came in today. Had to go to hardware store for 6 screws and nuts that didn't come in the package.... battery was fully charged. Not much by ways of instructions. Not able to split screen to show flasher and sonar on same screen (disappointing). Rotating gamble bracket, and colors seem crisp. Navigation through screens seems fairly easy to handle. Enjoy the background/color modes. The stopper on the transducer is well made. The case is protective, battery charger has an indicator. Hoping that I can get a zoom in the flasher mode. Jury is still out on how much I will glean from it,/enjoy it but it should be interesting. I will update when I get a chance to use it on the ice
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Update.... My unit came in today. Had to go to hardware store for 6 screws and nuts that didn't come in the package.... battery was fully charged. Not much by ways of instructions. Not able to split screen to show flasher and sonar on same screen (disappointing). Rotating gamble bracket, and colors seem crisp. Navigation through screens seems fairly easy to handle. Enjoy the background/color modes. The stopper on the transducer is well made. The case is protective, battery charger has an indicator. Hoping that I can get a zoom in the flasher mode. Jury is still out on how much I will glean from it,/enjoy it but it should be interesting. I will update when I get a chance to use it on the ice
Miller, does it have any IR modes?
Can you customize zoom windows? IE bottom 5 feet, 10-20 ft down in the water colum etc...
Looking at getting a Helix 7 or a Striker 7. Both seem to be good units. I'm just not finding that information on either one.
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Reviews are not promising.
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Links to reviews?
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Late Season.... Yes it has Low, Medium, and High, interference rejection. It also has movable zoom column in any depth. I am unsure if that zoom shows up on the flasher mode, or just the sonar mode, however. Also, it does not seem to be able to allow a split screen of the sonar and flasher together. I guess the best thing I can do is wait to try it out on the ice...by myself, and with my friends who have vexilars and a marcum....BTW...I might not enjoy this as much as my FL8 or LX3, so I'm trying to be as un biased as possible. I havent seen any reviews on the ice usage, as I believe it just became available this summer with the ice bundle. I dont buy the newest or greatest of anything, and the cost for me was $371 shipped. The only other time I was a guinea pig was two years ago on the hc 40 auger for $365. I hope I have the same luck with this...I will be honest, (Ive had Fords and Chevys, and liked both). Keeping my fingers crossed.
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Links to reviews?
I have to take the review with a grain of salt. Unit had a bad display.
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Bad screen could be a fluke or QC issues.
Checked out the Hummingbird Helix 5 and 7 today and was not impressed. No split screen with the flasher, screen draw lag that i couldnt make better through the settings. The menu system sucks to navigate. The depth, speed, temp info on the left side takes up a lot of realestate and i couldnt figure out how to turn it off. The Helix 7 seemed huge compared to the Lowrance Elite 7Ti that grabbed my attention. Time for a trip to Cabelas to check out the Garmins!
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So any reviews on the garmin ice package yet?
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I was able to get out only twice using my garmin. So far reviews are mixed. The wrist time out, I was in a weedy place, and it showed, second time out I was getting good readings, but it was a very early afternoon time. I am upset with not having too much reading information and demos....it's kind of a trial and error on the ice. I do like trying to use the graph, which has split screen zoom, but I'm used to reading the flasher, and I prefer that readout. Battery life is great, and waypoint marking is a neat feature for use in large lakes......if anyone has more info on how I can utilize the settings in a more productive way, please share......I like it, but don't know if I like it more than my lx 3 I used to have.....I will update later this weekend.
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I was able to get out only twice using my garmin. So far reviews are mixed. The wrist time out, I was in a weedy place, and it showed, second time out I was getting good readings, but it was a very early afternoon time. I am upset with not having too much reading information and demos....it's kind of a trial and error on the ice. I do like trying to use the graph, which has split screen zoom, but I'm used to reading the flasher, and I prefer that readout. Battery life is great, and waypoint marking is a neat feature for use in large lakes......if anyone has more info on how I can utilize the settings in a more productive way, please share......I like it, but don't know if I like it more than my lx 3 I used to have.....I will update later this weekend.
Which garmin unit do you have?
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I have the striker 5 with ice bundle
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fished with my stricker 5 and my humming bird 45 right next to each other the other day and i am liking my garmin much better
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That's good to hear plumber...and this may be a dumb question, but the zoom is in graph mode only, am I correct?....Thank you in advnce
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So far i am happy with the garmin striker 4 portable unit. I have had it out about 5 times, this is my first graph fish finder as i have had a showdown 5.6 single beam for the last 3 years. I am pretty happy with the cone angle which is much larger than my showdown so i have definitely marked a few more fish in certain applications. Ive used the flasher screen a few times and it worked good but prefer the graph at a ultra scroll speed. Unit has a a scope or real time column that is similar to my showdown. Happy with the unit still breaking it in so far and getting use to the arches that are fish and not a line as the showdown was. It has a split screen for both 200 and 77 khz transducers but on the smaller screen i prefer not to use it i pick one or the other.
Also happy that i can use this unit in the summer flyfishing which is another bonus feature that i am looking forward to. Unit might not have all the bells and whistles as some higher end units but for 280 canadian for the portable package i am more than happy with it.
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I'm looking at the Striker 4. Does anyone know if it displays readings as quickly as a real flasher?
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Sorry to bump an old thread. I bought the Garmin Stiker 4 portable kit for a summer fishing trip to Canada. I'm wondering if I can use it for ice fishing with the transducer it came with, or do I have to drop a $100 + for the ice transducer? Appreciate any feedback from those of you who have used it.
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It will work fine. The ice ducer is more convenient and has different cone angles but isn't a requirement.
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It will work fine. The ice ducer is more convenient and has different cone angles but isn't a requirement.
Good to know thanks for the quick response! It will be nice to get some winter time use out of this little unit.
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It works great. I usually don't fish lakes deeper than 15' and have had no issues. I don't even mess with the gain just leave it in auto. I 3d printed a small tube that I mounted the transducer to which allows it to stay nice and straight. I picked it up at Menards for $79.....seemed like a big savings over the pricey more "ice fishing" appropriate units. I have no doubt that a $500 Vex or Mar do great and if I fished really deep I would get one, but if you only plan on going out a couple times and not fish extreme depths this unit is great.
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Good to know thanks for the quick response! It will be nice to get some winter time use out of this little unit.
Forgot to mention, the way they have you set up the float by looping the cord around it is pretty lame. I'd recommend buying a stopper or making one and running the cord straight through.
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I have the Garmin Striker 5 Ice Bundle and really like it. I prefer traditional sonar to a flasher (I'm a bass fisherman). I like sonar so I can see how the fish respond in the history. Love the split screen. I can keep the full depth on one side and adjust the zoom manually to whatever portion of the water column I want. I also like that I can adjust the cone angle.
One lake I was fishing in 6' off a weed line and turned the zoom off and upped the cone angle to 24 degrees to better see when one was coming in to investigate. Then a week later I was fishing in 23' on a different lake. I had half the screen showing the full depth range, but the fish were coming in suspended - so I had my zoom manually set to show from 8' to 16', which was the depth range the suspended fish would swim into the cone at. I also zoomed in the cone to 17 degrees due to the increased depth.
The one draw back (as already pointed out) is that while the unit has a GPS function to find your spots the next time you're out, it does not have lake mapping with it. But if it came with mapping then it would probably cost $200 more. Hope this helps!
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The one draw back (as already pointed out) is that while the unit has a GPS function to find your spots the next time you're out, it does not have lake mapping with it. But if it came with mapping then it would probably cost $200 more. Hope this helps!
Actually the new models for this year have the Quick Draw feature that lets you combine GPS and sonar data into contour maps, only bumped up the price of the units by $20 bucks. The 7 and the 9 have wifi so you can upload and download different maps, but with the 4 and the 5 you're stuck with whatever you can make. Trying to do mapping through the ice would suck, but if you have a boat it's a nice feature.
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Actually the new models for this year have the Quick Draw feature that lets you combine GPS and sonar data into contour maps, only bumped up the price of the units by $20 bucks. The 7 and the 9 have wifi so you can upload and download different maps, but with the 4 and the 5 you're stuck with whatever you can make. Trying to do mapping through the ice would suck, but if you have a boat it's a nice feature.
That's great. Would be a cool feature to have, especially on some of the small state park lakes I fish.
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It works great. I usually don't fish lakes deeper than 15' and have had no issues. I don't even mess with the gain just leave it in auto. I 3d printed a small tube that I mounted the transducer to which allows it to stay nice and straight. I picked it up at Menards for $79.....seemed like a big savings over the pricey more "ice fishing" appropriate units. I have no doubt that a $500 Vex or Mar do great and if I fished really deep I would get one, but if you only plan on going out a couple times and not fish extreme depths this unit is great.
Hey MBOSS13 - wouldn't happen to have the 3d print build / STI files would you?