Vexilar in deep water

[2alarmfishing]

Been trying to find reviews on a FLX-20 past 40 feet of water. Any Vexilar owners have issues seeing lures at 80-100' of water? Not sure I'd go the FLX-28 route based on cost.

[raw outdoors]

I do use my FL20 in water from 40-80 feet it works very well. Below 80 feet I have a hard time getting serperation of the lure / bottom even if my lure is not even close to bottom. But I am fishing smaller hooks and smaller fish. Big fish big hooks maybe not an issue.

I think I prefer my helix ice unit. But the vexilar is so fast turn on and fish

[MooseRiverTrapper]

Helix is like cheating. The most incredible thing I have ever used for fishing.

[honker_clonker]

I've used a FL 20 for quite a few years now. For fishing laker tubes (3.5"-5") they still show up pretty good, though you have to crank the gain up quite a bit. Every time you increase the depth scale it halves the screen resolution essentially. On the max scale, what you view gets a little choppy compared to the 80 foot scale but everything still shows up. Hope that helps.

[2alarmfishing]

That helps for sure. My concern is sketchy jig coverage over 80'. May research the helix a bit more. Thanks guys

[CNP]

I don't own or have ever used a Vex flx20, but a unit that is advertised as a deep water flasher should certainly be capable of picking your offering at 80' without any difficulty, especially at an $800 price point. If it cannot I would reconsider purchasing it. A Humminbird Ice 45 picks up two lines 6' apart and can plainly see the barrel swivels 6' above my lures at 150'. Just a thought...

[2alarmfishing]

Originally Posted by CNP

I don't own or have ever used a Vex flx20, but a unit that is advertised as a deep water flasher should certainly be capable of picking your offering at 80' without any difficulty, especially at an $800 price point. If it cannot I would reconsider purchasing it. A Humminbird Ice 45 picks up two lines 6' apart and can plainly see the barrel swivels 6' above my lures at 150'. Just a thought...

I agree. Which is why I started the discussion. Maybe the Cold Lake hard cores could chime in.

[ROA]

The flx 20 head unit will easily read down to any depth you are likely it to fish at. Standard scale is up to 100 feet if you hold in the gain knob it triples standard scale so it goes to 300 feet. The new flx are 1000 Watts peak lots and lots of power for a vexilar. For reference my old fl 18 is 400 Watts peak (and so was the old fl 20) and even in low power mode which cuts power out put to transducer to 200watts I could see a standard 3/8 oz jig in 70+ feet of water.

Now here’s the thing that makes all the difference, it really depends on what transducer beam angle you have. I have the tri beam (9,12 and 20 degree) as well as the very powerful 8 degree ProView transducer. 20 and even 12 degree just send out to wide a signal that gets weak due to the large area in deep water say over 100 feet. This is also the case for my 12 degree Marcum or even my summer time Humminbird on the boat. If you want to be serious about 100ft plus get a narrow beam transducer.


I personally prefer old school Vexilar to anything else for ice fishing however the Helix seems to be a nice unit. I hear battery life is poor perhaps someone can comment.


If you want the ultimate for ice fishing look at Panoptix. It blows everything else away by a factor of 10. It’s the new big thing. YouTube search UncutAngling and Aron Weeb has the best vid out there showing it in action

[GWS]

Be a man
Just buy the vexlar already