Little bitty depth finders for a pontoon

I have a little pontoon boat that Im having a lot of fun with but seem to have a recurring problem. To wit : I cant see the darn bottom of the ponds that Ive been frequenting (another curse of warm water fishing) so have no idea how deep , stucture , fish or any of the other good things that go along with not getting skunked . Lately Ive been toying with the idea of one of those tiny depth/fish locators that you stick "D"cell batteris in . Like the ones that Cabellas has on sale now.
Any thought about this . I do not have a motor on this pontoon and there isnt much room . Thoughts and opinions and first hand accounts are what Im looking for .
Thanks,
Perch

How about a link to the one you are referencing?

The item in question is a Humminbird SmartCast.
I have one and it works, sort of. It will give an image of the water column. The problem is that the width of the cone of area being examined is very small. It may take MANY casts to get a feel for a particular area and even then you have to remember what the previous casts looked like.
My feeling is that it's better than nothing. I found one piece of underwater structure with it that has produced fish. Wouldn't have found it otherwise.

Note: reel it in VERY slowly.

I have an older model of the Norcross Hawkeye. It gives you OK results and you can get a recertified one for around $60. It is a hand held unit that has a transducer suspended under a float. It packs up small and is easy to use around docks and off of canoes and tubes. The new model lets you mount to the hull and troll with it and still remove it when you need to. I believe it has a 45 degree cone.

http://www.hawkeyeelectronics.com/pr.../overview.htm#

Unless it's very deep, how about a rope with markings every 5/10 feet? Low tech and inexpensive!!!

Going along the lines of the rope idea...a trick that a lot of chironomid fishers use to determine the depth is attach the forceps to the fly and drop it in the water till it hits bottom.

If you are thinking about the Hummingbird Fishin Buddies (formerly Bottomline), these are great on a small pontoon. Just get a holster and it will easily mount on pontoon or float tube. If you are thinking of one of the handheld depthfishers that look a flashlight (designed for ice fishing), then I think you can reconsider. YMMV.

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Originally Posted by whatfly

If you are thinking about the Hummingbird Fishin Buddies (formerly Bottomline), these are great on a small pontoon. Just get a holster and it will easily mount on pontoon or float tube. If you are thinking of one of the handheld depthfishers that look a flashlight (designed for ice fishing), then I think you can reconsider. YMMV.

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I agree. I bought the cheapest model hbird fishin buddy this year for my kick boat. Here is my 2 cents.

Very handy/easy on AA batteries/shows bottom well/shows some scruture/very narrow cone angle/might show a few fish/temp gauge is handy/turn up sensitivty to 30/shows weeds pretty good/would reccomend them to friends/got mine new off ebay/I use a homemade holster.

http://www.tackletour.com/reviewbottomline1200.html (review of the 1200)

or

http://reviews.basspro.com/2010/73438/reviews.htm (review of the 4200)http://sonar.ru/manuals/download/eng...ine/fb4200.pdf (operations manual for the 4200)


I have the 4200 but still in the box. Haven't used it yet. My friend has one older model he likes very very much. We were at Cabelas and I asked for his advice. His does not have the side view feature. He said he wish his had the side view. He recommeded the 4200 so I purchased it for $219.

I have not used it yet. So I cannot comment on it. However I posted some links for reviews for you.

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Originally Posted by ducksterman

How about a link to the one you are referencing?

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Not sure why you won't answer this perch???????? I've got one that I've used on a pontoon...float tube and NFO Nav II....but I don't know if it's the one you are asking about????????/

you should try to get quality you can find small but don't waste money on $129 special, you get wha you pay for

I fish out of a tube and have used the Smartcast for years. It works for me.

Any depthfinder you buy that will easily mount to a pontoon (stay away from the 'castable' ones, they aren't going to help you) will do all you need it to do.

You want to know the depth. Any sonar unit will tell you that.

If you want to know the temperature, you can buy inexpensive units that will tell you this also.

Those are by far the two most improtant pieces of information that a stillwater fly fisherman can have, and I'd rather fish without a reel than without my sonar unit.

If you know the depth, you can find channel edges, breaklines, and other 'edges' that hold fish. If you know the temperature, you can find the best available water temperature for your intended quarry. You can find and identify places where water temperatures change (springs, current edges, etc.) that also hold fish. Once you learn to use your unit to the limits of it's potential (taking it off 'auto' and setting hte sensitivity properly, learning to recognize what a hard or soft bottm 'looks like' on your screen, etc.), you will be able to identify differing bottom types, substrates, and cover types.

At most fly fishing depths, seeing a 'fish' will be mostly a matter of luck due to cone angles. Even a $2,000 full color unit won't tell you much about fish or structure in under 20 feet of water.

Side 'finders' are almost useless. Due to the processing needed to allow them to show anything, they are notoriously inaccurate and 'false' fish and structure images are common. I'd not pay for that feature and wouldn't use it on a unit that had it.

Good Luck!

Buddy

How about something like this? I have seen here on FAOL that alot of people use them and it gets decent reviews.

http://www.cabelas.com/product/Boati...3Bcat104588280

I use a Lowrance X67C on my kayak. It uses a reasonably-sized battery, about the size of a brick. It will go all day and then some. It is color, and excellent at showing fish, structure, depth, and surface temp (although my transducer is mounted inside the hull of my kayak, so I don't rely on the temperature readings too much). It was reasonably priced. I see Lowrance has replaced this unit with a newer model, but it is basically the same. It also has the "flasher mode", which is good for vertical fishing once you've anchored up. If your fly/lure is under you in the the cone of the transducer, you can watch it go up and down in real time (or close to it), and watch fish come up and hit it.
I recommend it. There are other reasonable options available as well.

i use a eagle cuda 240 which has a pixal of 240/168 and i would not go below this to get good picture quality.I had mine on a creek company pontoon sold that and put it on a small one man boat used contact cement and the suction cup mount for the transducer.The best battery is one like cabelas offers with the charger in 12v for around 30-40 bucks.

I have 3. One was a gift and 2 I won in FF club raffles. #1 is the Hawkeye F3350P, #2 is the Hawkeye F33P. Both are made by NorCross. They have the transducer on a long cord that tangles up and gets in the way of oars and fins. Also the unit is hand held and not easy to manage while flyfishing. #3 is a Fishing Buddy with a pontoon holster. I like it the best. Have it mounted where I can just glance at it when I want to. Jim

I like the Fishing Buddy.
Works great on the Tube, Canoe or small boat.
No transducer to mount, install or take off in seconds.

DuFf

http://i1143.photobucket.com/albums/...ishinBuddy.jpg

I just recently bought and installed a Lowrance Elite-4 for my kayak. it is a LOT more compact that what is pictured on the float tube in Duffin Boy's picture, includes a GPS plotter for marking structure etc, very light and easy and great display. It only uses roughly 250mA so a very small 12V 2.3 Ah SLA will power it for basically all day. You can buy glue-on RAM and Scotty mounts for float tubes. There is no reason to handicap yourself with low-quality electronics. Better to save up $$ and get something high quality than to spend half on stuff you'll have problems with.

yea i agree, i always try to get the very best state of the art in everything that has to do with fishing, but most of my excursions are walking up river or fishing structure from my canoe, this humminbird as nice as it is is a little more than i want, the fish finder cost twice what the canoe is worth over $1000, i guess i'll post an ad for it. i thought of you cause i know you have a boat and i trust you, i grew up in the inner city and it's not in my nature to trust just anyone. if you were interested i would send you the unit and if your satisfied than send me 500, that is half price and the only place this has been hooked up was in demo mode never been on a boat,,,anyway good luck fishing maybe we could meet at the grand river this late spring or early summer and i/ll show you what these 20 inch river smallmouth are all about. to me they are the gamest fish pound for pound inch for inch they are it, keep in touch bobby