Marine electronics evolve as quickly as computers and digital music players – in four or five years, they're totally out-of-date. That includes fishfinders, and if you're still using that old black-and-white bottom machine that can't tell you the difference between a minnow and a marlin, it's time to upgrade.
Just one problem: replacing a fishfinder isn't as simple as removing the old one and mounting the new. You'll also have to deal with new wiring, a transducer and maybe even cutting a hole in the bottom of your boat – what fun!
GARMINNew fishfinders offer color graphics, improved detail, sunlight viewability and better value. If mounting a new fishfinder is indeed this much of a hassle, is it really a worthwhile project? Considering new technology, the answer is yes. Now, you really will be able to tell which readings are baitfish and which are big fish. You will also be able to differentiate the sea bottom from structure, like wrecks and reefs, and distinguish bottom type much more easily. By installing a new fishfinder, you'll be able to see far more detail than you did with one that was made just a few years ago.
What gives? Screen technology has been developing by leaps and bounds. The most important advance in the past few years is the addition of inexpensive, color LCD screens. Sure, color has been around for more than a decade, but it used to be on high-end, budget-busting units only. Not so, these days. Now color units are available for just a few hundred dollars, and color is very important when looking at a fishfinder screen because it allows you to see the density of a reading at a glance. Hot red indicates a very dense reading on most units, while “cooler” colors like green and blue indicate readings that are less dense. So if you see two red readings under a cloud of blue, you know a couple of predators are hunting a school of bait.
Another advance that makes upgrading worthwhile is the level of detail. While most of yesteryear's screens had low pixel counts, today units in the same price range have more pixels. And pixels translate into on-screen detail, plain and simple.
HUMMINBIRDHumminbird's new IS technology offers a whole new advantage when you upgrade your fishfinder.Speaking of screens: those made in the past few years – including new transflective and QVGA screens – work far better in bright sunlight. Older LCD's tended to blank-out from certain angles, especially if you were wearing polarized sunglasses. Most new fishfinders also have features like dual-frequency abilities, allowing you to effectively probe the depths in both shallow and deep waters; ASP (advanced signal processing) which senses and adjusts the best automatic settings; and additional goodies like speed and temperature. Better still, today's screens are larger then those available for the same amount of cash a few years ago. And when it comes to fishfinder screens, bigger is definitely better.
SIDEWAYS GLANCE
Serious anglers may also want to upgrade to the latest and greatest fishfinder feature: side-finding technology. Side imaging isn't entirely new, but it is new to the recreational fishing world. In the past, units costing tens of thousands of dollars with grapefruit-sized transducers were necessary to get an underwater view of the fish and structure off to the sides of your boat. The low-cost side-scanning options on the recreational market consisted of units that turned a down-looking transducer sideways, and the results were less than spectacular. But Humminbird's newest unit, the 1197c SI Combo NVB, paints an image of what's under your boat for 240 feet in either direction on a huge 10.4 inch display. It pumps out a total 1,000-watts RMS through downward-looking 200 and 83 khz beams, and 455 and 800 khz side-looking beams.
What the heck is a khz, and why should you care? It a kilohertz, and it describes the frequency of the beam transmitted by your unit, which in turn determines what you see and how well you see it. Think of it this way: Toss a pebble into a pond and it makes small, fast waves – short frequency, or 200-khz in fishfinder speak – which bounce back when they hit small items. Now think of tossing a boulder into the same pond. It will create larger, less-frequent waves – low frequency, often 50-khz – which roll right over small items without noticing them but continue on for a longer distance. On average in most conditions, that 200 khz wave will travel about 600 feet deep, which is the normal operating limit for a unit pumping out this frequency. A 50 khz unit, however, with its lower detail, may reach thousands of feet.
