Imaging sonars

[gronk]

I looking for a new sonar for the boat this year and wondering if any one has tried the down or side imaging units in the shallow and murky Alberta lakes.

How do the perform in 6 to 30 feet and in that lovey thick green algae?

[gronk]

Someone has to has tried one out.

[ArtVandelay]

I have the Lowrance Elite-5x DSI and I'm not happy with it. It shows weeds and bottom structure beautifully, even in the heavy algae out at CVR, but I used it pretty much all last season and have yet to mark a fish with it. I should have returned it to Lowrance but figured it needed some adjustments. Despite my best efforts, no fishies.

I looking for a new sonar for the boat this year and wondering if any one has tried the down or side imaging units in the shallow and murky Alberta lakes.

How do the perform in 6 to 30 feet and in that lovey thick green algae?

[TrollGRG]

I have the down looking sonar and it works as advertized. Remember though that if you are in 6 feet of water you aren't going to see much even with a 60 degree cone. As for the algae, it usually floats on the surface and your transducer is below it so it usually isn't a factor.

In a word - I love it - I guess that is 3 words.

[thorne]

Ok time for my 2 cents....I have the HDS 8 on my boat with side scan/down scan and broad band (color) I absolutely love it. The images in all conditions are amazing. I have a post from a year or two ago with pics from Wabamun and they speak for themselves. I have a screen shot of a pike to the port side of my boat and you can easily see its a pike. The side scan and down scan transducers operate on a very high frequency to pick up more detail and do so beautifully. You just have to adjust settings to work different lakes and conditios I also have screen shots where you can pick out individual fish in bait balls. The best combo I find is using the broad band in conjunction with the side scan. The broad band assigns different colors to different densities. This gives no guess work images of bottom and fish separation. So if you overlay the broad band with the down/side scan they provide you with great detail and density info. So if you have a sunken tree next to a rock on the bottom with a walleye right in the middle...its all there no questions. With the HDS systems you can overlay on the same screen or split screen it to have the broad band and side/down scan separated. This is my preferred method. This way my side scanis tuned to give me the best structure shots possible and then when I see something I like I troll across it using broad band to identify the fish. COLD LAKE Definitely proved the value of the system. The side scan would pick up lakers up to 120 feet to port or starboard. I would mark these returns using the scrolling feature and plot a trolling path o er them. I would then switch to broadband to identify the thermocline (which shows up perfectly) drop the downriggers and wait for a hit.the broadband really hives a great Idea as the size of the fish. When I come across a bait ball on broad band I can focus in on the down scan and define if its cisco or minnows. All in all the system is awesome. You just have to play with it and learn what it can do and now to do it. Hope this helps.