Buying new fish finder - any recommendations?

[scesfiremedic]

I have an old Garmin 160C that has served me well for years but it is time to upgrade. I have a 12 foot Lund deep V, fish mostly shallow waters (less than 40 feet). I have read a ton of reviews and articles and figure I should go with side scan over down scan (or get both) as I don't fish really deep water. I want GPS (so I don't have to power 2 devices) and don't want to spend more than $900 if possible. Have looked at the following units:

Lowrance Hook 5 Chirp ($649) no sidescan

Garmin Striker 7 SV ($679)

Humminbird Helix 7 SI ($899)

Any recommendations, thoughts?

[Bemoredog]

I picked up a Lowrance Elite Ti 7 for around a grand. Does sidescan, downscan and has sonar with CHIRP. The chirp doesn't work with sidescan on. Not a huge fan of sidescan anyways. It comes with a bunch of navionics maps and you get a year of updates plus access to insight genesis social maps. It uses a single (large) transducer. I picked it up from the fishing hole. The 5 incher is significantly cheaper. You do have to do your homework and make sure you buy the correct one. Some come only with the screen and no transducer. Setup is slightly painful because instructions and info is poor. Very versatile and lots of options but somewhat steep learning curve.

It has bluetooth and wireless as well. And GPS.

If I did it all over again I might just get something simple with a large screen, chirp and downscan. Access to bathy data on lakes is definitely nice for those reservoirs where there are multiple underwater hazards. You can also make your own bathy charts, save waypoints and routes. Make sure you have a big battery to run it.

[RavYak]

I have 2 kayaks. My main one has side imaging, gps etc. My spare one has just a basic black and white sonar. I recently used my spare kayak on a trip and I quickly realised just how much I rely on the better fish finder.

To me GPS and colour are must haves. Side imaging is a nice to have, it is useless 90% of the time but 10% of the time it can help you locate a piece of structure you otherwise would have missed.

If you go with side imaging you do need a bigger screen to take advantage of it. A 7 inch screen is the absolutely smallest I would go otherwise don't waste money on SI.

The ability to make your own charts is huge.

I recently just found out that Humminbird isn't the only one to offer real time homemade charts. Garmin also has that ability and even offers it on some of its cheaper fish finders(I believe only on echomap and gpsmap models though).

Garmin also has a real time sonar called panoptix that is expensive but interesting as well. I might very well consider upgrading to a Garmin in the future as I like a lot of what they offer including much better base maps and even preloaded dept charts on some units.

Ultimately all the companies offer decent fish finders, all you can do is create a list of what you want then narrow down the field and pick whichever one meets all your requirements or price point etc.

[EZM]

http://www.humminbird.com/Products/HELIX-9-DI-GPS/

Helix 9

It has Autochart Live but no side imaging.

If you don't troll in deeper water - the side image is a feature that you can live life without. The Autochart Live is the feature you want in a new unit.

I do quite a bit of trolling - so I would get the SI unit ..... but if you don't .... I wouldn't pay the extra money for this feature.

[Robmcleod82]

I recently purchased a simrad go7 from west marine. I really like the unit but am already wishing I spent the extra 300 for one with side imaging.

[jackfish]

I recently bought a Garmin Echomap 55 DV Chirp, comes loaded with Canadian Lakeview maps, Chirp sonar, It has the ability to map the bottom and save to an SD card, easy to use, tracking and GPS is good, I really like it. I choose this unit as I was planning a trip to northern manitoba, and the software has alot of lakes in northern Manitoba (from what I could see it seemed better than Lakemaster for that area) When I bought the unit, I bought it from an Alberta based online store for $799, saw the identical unit at the "BIG" store for $899, so if you buy, check out GPS central online. I would also get the CHIRP as opposed to dual beam. Hope this helps.

[Angler107]

I have the lowrance hook 5 tripleshot. It is a nice unit and works well, but after having it for a few months I wish I had went with the 7 inch. Also on a hobie outback.