Which Transducer to buy - Help.

[Bri The Pom]

Hi all,

Looking at buying a lowrance hds 5x from the US.Need help on which transducer 50/200khz or 83/200khz.

Most of my fishing will be off the gold coast and possibly the bay at times.

Cheers

Bri

[noname]

god noooooooooooo, check out some furuno's !

[Scope]

Bri how deep is the water you generally fish?

[Bri The Pom]

Rob, the boat already has a hds 5 gps fitted so i need to match.

Jono, not sure never been there before.

[Scope]

No worries mate. I forget the exact stats but I think they recommend the 83khs for 30m (100ish foot) or less, And the 50khz for anything more.

It pretty much comes down to this. The 83khz will have a wider cone beam, making it easier to identify structure and fish in a larger, shallower area. Whereas the 50khz will have a thinner one, meaning you will see less of a wider area but will get a better return when going deeper.

Anyone feel free to jump in and correct me if this is wrong

I hope this helps mate - Jono

/>http://www.lowrance.com/Support/Tips-and-Tutorials/Transducer-Guide/

Also I think if you google the difference between them a heap of stuff will come up from other forums. I had to research it when I was looking at buying.

[reef_raider]

your 83/200 is going to work at 100m+ but what scope said is right

anything over 40 odd metres go for your 50/200 as the 50 shoots down the narrower beam and not trying to cover as much ground therefor giving a better return in deeper water

cheers, Jake

[tiotony]

yeah Scope has got it right with the frequencies. I work with sonar for a living in the offshore industry (as I write this I am currently on the north west shelf, tracking two remotely operated vehicles in 120m of water by sonar, drooling over the underwater video of giant reef jacks/nannygai/cod/spanglies/GT's ), and basically the lower the frequency, the deeper it will work. However, the higher the frequency you can get away with is better, as you get much better definition ie: you are more likely to pick up a fish sitting off the seabed, and get a better idea of what the seabed looks like.

The nerdy mechanics of it, the lower the frequency = the bigger the physical size of the soundwave. Therefore a smaller sized (higher frequency) soundwave has a better chance of bouncing off small objects, however it struggles to travel as far. I think a good comparision would be a wave hitting a bommie- the part of a small choppy wave hitting the bommie will be reflected off it, but a big rolling swell wave will roll over the top of it and not be reflected till it hits the shoreline.

Noting this personally I'd go the higher frequency one, to have a better indication of whats going on down there, unless you are fishing in quite deep water?