Electronics

[Odyssey]

Ok…. More questions! 
 

Is structure scan worth it? I don’t do a huge amount on the reefs and no wrecking. So…. Does a good chirp sonar do a good enough job? I think this is one for @JDP
 

Due to the costs I’m wondering whether a high quality chirp transducer would give me enough detail without needing downscan…. I’m thinking a B75 Airmar transducer and either sonar hub or new NSS Evo 3s MFD to go with my NSE12…. 

Edited December 3, 2023 by Odyssey

[JDP]

7 hours ago, Odyssey said:

Ok…. More questions! 
 

Is structure scan worth it? I don’t do a huge amount on the reefs and no wrecking. So…. Does a good chirp sonar do a good enough job? I think this is one for @JDP
 

Due to the costs I’m wondering whether a high quality chirp transducer would give me enough detail without needing downscan…. I’m thinking a B75 Airmar transducer and either sonar hub or new NSS Evo 3s MFD to go with my NSE12…. 

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!!!!
 

 

[Odyssey]

@JDP

Thank you 🙂 much appreciated! 
 

looks like it’s a new 3 in on through hull transducer and NSS EVO3S 12 inch on order soon… still keeping an NSE12 for navigation as it works fine so that’ll save me a few ££££… 

Now to rob a bank to pay for it all 🙄

[JDP]

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. 

[Odyssey]

I’m looking at a through hull transducer https://www.cactusnav.com/simrad-totalscan-thru-hull-transducer-with-medium-high-chirp-p-27181.html?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvJud_qD4ggMV1cLtCh339Qd1EAQYASABEgI4XPD_BwE

Im on a pod with outboards so stern Mount won’t be useful for me as I’ll be looking to motor at 10-12 knots looking for bird/whale for the tuna before dropping to 6knts when trolling. 
 

Its the drilling a hole in my hull I’m dreading 😬 I may get it done professionally as it’ll likely need a faring block unless I get it right  on the keel….

[Andy135]

1 hour ago, Odyssey said:

I’m looking at a through hull transducer https://www.cactusnav.com/simrad-totalscan-thru-hull-transducer-with-medium-high-chirp-p-27181.html?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvJud_qD4ggMV1cLtCh339Qd1EAQYASABEgI4XPD_BwE

Im on a pod with outboards so stern Mount won’t be useful for me as I’ll be looking to motor at 10-12 knots looking for bird/whale for the tuna before dropping to 6knts when trolling. 
 

Its the drilling a hole in my hull I’m dreading 😬 I may get it done professionally as it’ll likely need a faring block unless I get it right  on the keel….

Have you considered a shoot-through transducer instead? I had an Airmar M265 CHIRP one on JG and it was excellent at holding bottom at all speeds with no interference or prop wash. And no holes in the hull.

https://www.echomasterdirect.co.uk/In_Hull_Transducers

The M260/265 series is on the steep side, but there are more basic options available that might need your needs.

 

[Odyssey]

54 minutes ago, Andy135 said:

Have you considered a shoot-through transducer instead? I had an Airmar M265 CHIRP one on JG and it was excellent at holding bottom at all speeds with no interference or prop wash. And no holes in the hull.

https://www.echomasterdirect.co.uk/In_Hull_Transducers

The M260/265 series is on the steep side, but there are more basic options available that might need your needs.

 

Looks like could be a good option 🙂 bit pricey so may need to shop around see what options are…

CHIRP is kind of a must if I’m upgrading, water temp I maybe able to get via an external sensor but if I don’t need to drill holes in the hull that would be useful 🤣🤣🤣

[Odyssey]

6 hours ago, Andy135 said:

Have you considered a shoot-through transducer instead? I had an Airmar M265 CHIRP one on JG and it was excellent at holding bottom at all speeds with no interference or prop wash. And no holes in the hull.

https://www.echomasterdirect.co.uk/In_Hull_Transducers

The M260/265 series is on the steep side, but there are more basic options available that might need your needs.

 

What the clarity like? Did you get much detail on the bottom as well as bait fish high in the water? 
 

Its looking like a very good solution so far as I can put a sonar hub in and that’ll give me CHiRP functionality with my existing MFDs so hopefully saves me a few £££ and I can put that to the transduxer 

[Andy135]

1 hour ago, Odyssey said:

What the clarity like? Did you get much detail on the bottom as well as bait fish high in the water? 
 

Its looking like a very good solution so far as I can put a sonar hub in and that’ll give me CHiRP functionality with my existing MFDs so hopefully saves me a few £££ and I can put that to the transduxer 

The shoot-through CHIRP images were always clearer/crisper than the transom-mounted CHIRP I had on Apache and on JG, due to the fact that the shoot-through transducer is upstream of the transom and prop wash, so pretty much zero turbulence or bubbles to interfere with the image.

Detail was fine for fishing - it was able to pick up a wreck at 18kts. You can see some fish downtide in mid-water on the image below.

[JDP]

9 hours ago, Odyssey said:

I’m looking at a through hull transducer https://www.cactusnav.com/simrad-totalscan-thru-hull-transducer-with-medium-high-chirp-p-27181.html?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvJud_qD4ggMV1cLtCh339Qd1EAQYASABEgI4XPD_BwE

Im on a pod with outboards so stern Mount won’t be useful for me as I’ll be looking to motor at 10-12 knots looking for bird/whale for the tuna before dropping to 6knts when trolling. 
 

Its the drilling a hole in my hull I’m dreading 😬 I may get it done professionally as it’ll likely need a faring block unless I get it right  on the keel….

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.

Edited December 5, 2023 by JDP

[JDP]

7 minutes ago, Andy135 said:

The shoot-through CHIRP images were always clearer/crisper than the transom-mounted CHIRP I had on Apache and on JG, due to the fact that the shoot-through transducer is upstream of the transom and prop wash, so pretty much zero turbulence or bubbles to interfere with the image.

Detail was fine for fishing - it was able to pick up a wreck at 18kts. You can see some fish downtide in mid-water on the image below.

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.

[Andy135]

3 minutes ago, JDP said:

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.

Metres. Lowrance. Image at below planing below.

And a side scan of the same wreck at low speed.

[JDP]

5 minutes ago, Andy135 said:

Metres. Lowrance. Image at below planing below.

And a side scan of the same wreck at low speed.

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.

[Andy135]

15 minutes ago, JonC said:

Is that the Camberwell? 
The Covid enquiry resumes tomorrow, I’m sure Hugh will be asking if it was really necessary to uninvite me. 

No, it's the Highland Brigade, off Dunnose Head.

[Andy135]

33 minutes ago, JDP said:

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.

I'm between boats so I don't have any head units to experiment with, but when I did have them I found the green palette seemed to work best to my eyes. The other colour options just didn't seem to show contrast or definition as clearly.

[Odyssey]

New (to me) MFD being collected tomorrow… a road trip with Pip to Hamble marina to pick up a nearly new Simrad NSS Evo3s 9 inch. (Will need to give the truck a wash and polish as it’s a very posh part of the boat world 😬) 

Plan to put the 7in out on deck and network it so that my anglers can see what’s going on 🙂 

Not sure on transducer yet but at least I’ve made a start on deciding what gear to go for 🤣🤣🤣

Edited December 19, 2023 by Odyssey

[Odyssey]

2 hours ago, JonC said:

I hope that you are going there well tooled up? Can get nasty down there. 

I’ve got the dog, she gets violent if she thinks someone will steal her ball 

[JDP]

22 hours ago, Odyssey said:

New (to me) MFD being collected tomorrow… a road trip with Pip to Hamble marina to pick up a nearly new Simrad NSS Evo3s 9 inch. (Will need to give the truck a wash and polish as it’s a very posh part of the boat world 😬) 

Plan to put the 7in out on deck and network it so that my anglers can see what’s going on 🙂 

Not sure on transducer yet but at least I’ve made a start on deciding what gear to go for 🤣🤣🤣

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!!!!! 

[Odyssey]

18 hours ago, JDP said:

You should have 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!!!!! 

Don’t tempt me…. It’s howling 50mph winds here, work is 💩 I could do with some sunshine in my life 

[Odyssey]

On 12/5/2023 at 1:38 PM, Andy135 said:

Have you considered a shoot-through transducer instead? I had an Airmar M265 CHIRP one on JG and it was excellent at holding bottom at all speeds with no interference or prop wash. And no holes in the hull.

https://www.echomasterdirect.co.uk/In_Hull_Transducers

The M260/265 series is on the steep side, but there are more basic options available that might need your needs.

 

Back to talking transducers….

I don’t suppose you got any photos of their drifting over fish? It looks like a great unit but don’t want to spend the money without having an idea that it’s going to cover my needs….

[Andy135]

2 hours ago, Odyssey said:

Back to talking transducers….

I don’t suppose you got any photos of their drifting over fish? It looks like a great unit but don’t want to spend the money without having an idea that it’s going to cover my needs….

No pics.

[JDP]

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. 

 

[Odyssey]

Looks like I’m going for the xSonic Airmar M260

Itll be the shoot through hull type…. Just need to sort a temp sensor now 🤔

[GPSguru]

1 hour ago, Odyssey said:

Looks like I’m going for the xSonic Airmar M260

Itll be the shoot through hull type…. Just need to sort a temp sensor now 🤔

Sounds OK, get on with it 👍

Remember Luke, regardless of what system you go for, the technology is all the same, that is the nature of the beast.

It all comes down to the way in which the GUI (graphical user interface) is presented, and ease of use, and what works for one person, might not work for another, it is mostly personal preferences and interpretation, BUT, the technology behind the screens is all the same.

 

[JDP]

33 minutes ago, Odyssey said:

Looks like I’m going for the xSonic Airmar M260

Itll be the shoot through hull type…. Just need to sort a temp sensor now 🤔

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.