Lowrance HDS sounder/plotter

[goat_man_baa]

Has anyone got one of these yet or seen them around? My gps has moisture clouds inside it so thinking i might have to spend Prime Minister Dudds stimulus on a new combo before i just spend it on crap or piss it up the wall. Also liked the look of the side imaging hummingbirds but i don't have a need for that enough to justify the price.

[noname]

i gave a chap a hand ,not long ago with a lowrance combo unit, was the sounder he wanted to know about. anyway, i found it to be not so user friendly in sounder mode to get the best out of it. as with most things, if you want it to work well for ya, you have to drive it. just found to many buttons to depress to do a simple function, this was in reguards to upper and lower limits, as with mine you just press - shift or + shift, i found with the lowrance you had to go into a menu, then into another menu, select what function, highlight it then it would let you in. highlight the function and change it accordingly. then exit, exit,exit. also found it difficult to determine the bottom hardness, as i went over mud, sand and rocks, the color did not change over the sand and mud, when over the rocks, the bottom was the same color as sand and mud, but got thicker, could see little humps, showing the rocks below.

also believe lowrance has not enough colors to tell you what size a fish is, from memory all the fish came up a yellowie, orange color, so determining bait fish from sat snapper pearlies would be impossible to determine, unless you know how they schooled up. this was just an example. with mine, i could almost tell if there were prawns under the boat or snapper, but there are exceptions, as some fish show in a lighter color, but you soon find this out. eg. pearl pearch come up on my sounder as a light blue, as do prawns and bait fish such as slimmies. but you won't find prawns or slimmies in 100 mtrs of water, sitting near the bottom. all i'm really saying is do your homework, there are sounders and sounders. all are not equal. good luck with it.

rob

[Feral]

My Lowrance has had moisture clouds in it for 3 years, still going! Just needs a quarter hour of sun first up to be able to see the screen well!

[goat_man_baa]

Cheers for that rob, has got me thinking and will try to see one in action before buying. What sort is yours? Another question, with regards to gps maps, are some types better than others? I realize different manufacturers make cards for different brands of gps, just wondering if some are more accurate or informative than others. cheers

[noname]

goat_man_baa wrote:

Cheers for that rob, has got me thinking and will try to see one in action before buying. What sort is yours? Another question, with regards to gps maps, are some types better than others? I realize different manufacturers make cards for different brands of gps, just wondering if some are more accurate or informative than others. cheers

i don't have a combo, no good for the type of fishing i do, did. it's a furuno 600L. very user friendly. i have a garmin 182 and garmin 298 for gps's, easy to use, good imformation, good zoom capabilities, i have found with the lowrance, furuno, and some others, but can't remember off hand. i'll use this as an example ok.

when i aproach a mark to fish i will zoom in as close as the unit will let me go. 5mtr tab on the screen, to get as close to the spot as i can.

if this spot happens to be close to a beacon, say 30 mtrs away from it, with some brand of gps's , you loose the screen, will come up as grid lines with the words overzoom down the bottom rhs of screen. so you loose all imformation, beacon included, not much of a problem if your fishing close by to a lit up beacon, but turn the light out , and at night, can be a real pain, this happens mostly around mud island as some of the beacons either don't work or that many boats, it's hard to determine boats from beacons, with the garmins all the imformation stays on the screen no matter how close you zoom in. hope this helps in some way.

[goat_man_baa]

Yeah i will keep my current gps in the boat as well until it is completely rooted so i'll be able to use the combo pretty much just as a sounder until then.

[Leighton]

Been looking at just the single Fishfinder Unit Lowrance HDS 5X

Any other places I sould try for a price?