JDP

Not all boats obviously, many have have more power. More power better economy and longer lasting engines.

Most boats here are at least 2/1 ratio. 500kg boat =100hp+, 1000kg boat 200hp+. My 15ft 550kg boat does not feel overpowered at all with a Yam f115, its a safer boat as I have the power to control it quickly in heavy seas. Underpowered boats can be dangerous if they are slow to respond when you need them to move quickly. All outboards should be propped to rev out close to the manufacturers recommended max rpm. In regards to fuel burn, the boat I have now Ive also owned in the past with various other outboard configurations. Ive owned the same boat with a Yam f70, Merc 90, Honda 90 and now Yam f115, the latest 115 is by far the most economical to run. With a Yam f70 I returned at best 2.5km per litre, the f115 is giving 3.7km per litre. Each propped to reach the recommend max rpm. Underpowered boats will be expensive to run if do long distances.

Yes never seen one in my area, more a harbour this side of the pond. They don't even state the hull degree on their website, something all manufacturers do here.

The links to those merry fishers looked underpowered and I would stay well away from any etec engine, there's good reason the company went belly up. Even a 605 with a 115 Yam doesn't give great performance but if you don't mind causing around slowly then its acceptable. Once you get a bit of marine growth, full fuel tank and all the bits and pieces most of us leave in boats you will see a drop from these figures given here in this video.

Just to add, the 260 is not chirp, its old technology.

I had an external mount Airmar 260, you might even be able to find my review on the other forum from years back which I did. At the time I was using Lowrance hds mk 3 head units. It was the worst transducer I've owned, even comparing against transducers a fraction of the cost. Side by side offshore in deep water the 260 would lose bottom and not find it again until I got back to water depths of 100m (ish). When it did pick up bottom in shallower depths there was no advantage in detail to what the stock standard lowrance transducer showed on screen, to be totally honest it was worse. The narrow 6 degree beam at 200khz only shows a very small footprint of the bottom, so fish would need to be directly under the beam to show on the head unit. Being such a narrow beam also means it needs to be set at the perfect angle to send and receive a signal. Even after many adjustments to get the angle spot on, rough sea's would see the signal missing the transducer on its return in deep water. Most people here go for the wider beam angle especially targeting game fish that feed on large schools of mackerel. Setting my 260 to 50khz for its wider beam signal meant having to drive the boat so slow that I could not pick up bottom at all at cruising speeds, unlike my Lowrances $150 transducer. I would have to know where a mark already was in deeper water then drift over it to have any chance of picking it up. Much of the time though the two head units would fail to receive any signal as the seas always have some chop and swell. Just pointing out though that the Lowrance head units are the equivalent of 600wt units and the 260 is a 1kw, however they should of been able to drive the transducer well enough. The $150 200-50khz remained my go to transducer for many years. It could pick up bottom in 600m of water and show jigs, bait rigs, small fish and large fish very well. I often see the 260 for sale on the marketplace and ebay where Ive never seen any of the wider beam transducers on the secondhand market. There are transom mount sliding brackets which allow transducers to be raised for boats on moorings. I have used these (still do) as I run three transducers even on my 15ft boat and being able to raise big transducers out of the water when running can assist boat performance when you are racing your mates!!!!! You may have netter luck if you are committed to getting it now.

Glamour conditions to be out there. As for the doggies, you know how it is, without pic's they didn't exist.

Yes thats how I have posted videos in the past but I just didn't want poorly filmed phone video on my YT account. You get to many protesting vegans having their little tantrums if you kill, release, use fuel, own something not made out of hemp etc etc!!!!!

The young lad who fishes with me much of the time jumped ship to fish with my daughter. Ive tried numerous was to post the short video on here without luck, so given up and just grabbed a few screen shots. Its hard to tell from these though its size, which they estimated to be around the 60-70kg which is about average on them. They are considered a pest, as like many of the ray family, put up very little action in a fight. They were chasing hounds which we eat here and managed a few of these smaller ones, however the target was to get one over 25kg. Out searching for marlin tomorrow if the weather allows.

265hw in shallow 28m of water, showing pilchards and bigger predators bellow. Will be out targeting marlin on Friday in 400ft +so can grab a shot from then if I see anything interesting. We don't with to the low frequency unless we are targeting fish in the 1500-2000 with the other transducer. The shallow water ones are good to around the 1000ft, so would recommend those for UK waters. I prefer using the black screen which unfortunately isn't an option with my Garmin's.

Did you try and get the gelcoat back up to its original colour and shine before putting them on ? The gelcoat looks lacking in lustre. I just did a 50ft cat before Xmas which hadn't been polished in over 20ys which came up extremely well even after being exposed to the harsh sun over here.

He is all of those things and so much more.

Which Jon, New year was so yesterday, easter sales are on now but Im waiting until after easter to buy my eggs.

Enjoyed the report, it kind of made me miss those cold afternoons where it gets dark early afternoon. Shame the fish weren’t on the bite but that’s what keeps us trying.

You should of made the business trip here, I still have two game outfits and two 24in Simrads with all the control boxes, transducers, remotes, radio and I believe auto pilot controller. Marlin are starting to turn up too!!!!!

That rod and reel I have above is one of the ones I was offering for sale when you were after some. It cost me $1000 which equates to 500 quid, so hard to resist not buying it!!!!!!

It's just another day to me, especially since moving from the UK which really gets onboard with the festive season. Here it's just a summer hot day with heaps of tourists about. Personally I just buy fishing gear when I can justify needing more!!!!...I did just buy a limited edition Ian Miller sword rod and talica reel, so I could call that my Xmas present.

If you plan on making any, I use these double eyed molds https://store.do-itmolds.com/Trolling-Sinker-Molds_c_178.html Personally I don't like the leads with swivels inserted into the lead as I found they tend to break off after a few uses, not sure if its the heat from the molten lead that weakens them or what. What speed, depth, lure size, and line class will you be wanting to use them for ?

Twin 90's ?

Been busy doing maintenance on mine and the boats my daughter skippers, as well as doing a bit of commercial abalone dive boat skippering. The rod and line fishing has been excellent over the past few months, if anything to good which has made me a bit bored with it. Trying to get motivated to turn my sights on the marlin season now but I just feel I’ve been there and done that to much. I took my youngest daughter and her partner out who managed 3 marlin species in a day. He also manged to catch and release over 40 coral trout to 80cm in one session from my boat on my annual northern trip. The tropical fishing was simply incredible thanks to being able to download satellite images into my GPS showing every detail of shallow coral reef systems. Northern bluefin tuna were in schools which could almost be guaranteed in sight from any location we fished, which also had various large trevally species following under. The beaches are currently thick with Aus salmon in the 3-6kg size with packs of whaler sharks getting among them. I am planning chasing a few mako solo but again feel a bit lacking in enthusiasm, however I will fill the boat with fuel this morning so I can at least head out to try and grab a few lobsters for Xmas dinner. Oh yes, it’s been bloody hot here too, 37’c when polishing one of the boats ( three in total ). There are several large schools of salmon in this shot, the salmon which are off the right of the screen had some decent sized sharks I estimate in the 150kg + size. I had to use my wife’s polarised glasses over the front of my phone camera to help see these salmon. Aus salmon are not related to normal salmon, these are a far more powerful tough fighting fish. The fact they are more powerful makes their flesh strong and meaty to eat and less desirable.

Do you ever experiment with different pallet colours for both traditional down and sidescan ? colour 13 was always my favourite or dark blue on the Lowrance and amber on the sidescan. I found I could adjust the colour gain so that marine growth on the bottom showed as green and where ever I found green there would be fish. On sidescan I adjust so that the front side of objects are almost white and the shadows black, which helps seperate and define objects better. Thats a cracking looking wreck, wish we had some that shallow locally, here they are mostly in 130m+ or on the rocks. On the simrad I like the black background, especially when looking for bait with marlin and tuna feeding on them.

Is this in feet or metres ? Even if it is metres, its still very shallow water and looks like a pretty weak signal to me, which might just be due to the speed. Do you have any screen shots bellow planing speeds ? Is this a Lowrance or Simrad.

At least thats only a small hole to put in the boat, I also have an airmar 175hw cut into mine which is a big hole to cut. Ive put 1kw in most boats Ive owned myself as they've been quite straightforward to install. The boat I have now had one was fitted by a dealership and they have the arrow pointing slightly off from where it should be. It still works ok but it bugs me that a place that charged $750 to the previous owner installed it slightly out. I have tried removing it but once the sealant is set there seems to be no budging. I can't really comment on how sidescan will be at 12kts as I used mine in deeper water at slower trolling speeds with my Lowrance and Simrad (also the Garmin). My guess would be put it on 455khz and around 50-60m each side of the boat and see how it goes. You might find the 6kts running speed to be the best though. On traditional sonar in chirp I was able to show bottom still even on the higher 200khz over 300m and 450-500m using 83khz. With the transducer you are installing, even if its facing the wrong way you can easily sort that out simply on the headhunt in the menu by flipping the image.

Unfortunately I can't put my hands on screen shots from my main computer when I was using my Simrad but these are some shallow soundings to around 30m from the old lowrance which wasn't as good as the Simrad in my opinion. These have been greatly reduced in size to post on here, so lacking some detail. The small fish which Ive put a red circle around are about 4ins in size. The shallow water image shows the ripples on the sand and some of the rocks show deep cracks, which helps me find great spots to free dive for lobsters. That transducer on 455khz was pretty good up to 70m in depth. These screen shots were early days of getting to know side scan at the time. By tweaking the brightness and contrast more than in these images you can really make the picture pop and see fish better. People will say this gear is no good in rough weather but thats simply because they don't work around the conditions. If you try sides scan heading into big seas or side on, the results will be poor but if you scan running with the wave direction its still possible to get good results. Its simply changing the approach to an area to get a better image. I do have the gain up high in these images as I liked seeing my soft plastics and micro jigs on the screen and was willing to put up with how this looks to be able to see them. Because I scan at depths around 100-140m the Garmin gt51 allows for a lower frequency of 260. This has drawbacks though, so for me its just, for finding ground or big schools of baitfish which are normally mackerel like the ones we get in the UK. Also the more depth you go the wider the image will be, so trying to view 200m each side even on my 12ins hd screen can be hard to make make out. I had best results with mine through hull on one of the boats I owned a while back. Having them transom mounted will often pick up part of the outboard or sterndrive leg. I had to trim my engine up quite high when scanning to avoid this.

In my opinion hell yes its worth it. However there are many people who haven't taken the time to learn how to use and give up in frustration rather than do a little research on how to use it. Firstly when I had Simrad and Lowrance I also found it to be extremely good, however the gt51 transducer from Garmin has a low 260 frequency which allows for much deeper water scanning. Downside of lower frequency though is definition, yes I can find structure to the sides of my boat at depths of 140m deep and around 200m either side of the boat but I will struggle seeing any fish in deeper water. In saying that I can pick up large schools of mackerel off to the sides of the boat and once I see those hazy clouds of bait to the side of the boat I can swing the boat around to check over the top if there's anything bigger underneath the boat using chirp. This is an old video now from 2015 which gave a good representation of one of the transducers Im running. I can't remember if he does any deepwater sides caning but if I remember he does do some shallow stuff. Just heading out to polish the boat my daughter skippers (50ft cougar cat) so will get back on this later with a few tips on side can. By the way I have the two 24 ins Simrads with 3d and sides can in my garage for sale right now, these are monster sized screens!!!!!...also have 5 new Shimano game rods with the tags on them, about time you made a business trip!!!!