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Looking for a portable fish finder for use on rental boats in the Eastern Sierra, Crowley and Bridgeport Reservoir for the most part. I may also use it float tubing if possible.
Fishing primarily for trout in anchored positions, versus trolling.
Looking for depth, tempature, structure, and of course.... fish!
Any good ones in the $125-$300 range for portables?
Thanks
Humming bird makes a pretty cool one with a suction cup on the transducer so you could just suck it to a rental boat kayak pontoon. Google it I seen a couple guys on the water with it and they said it worked great.
I love my Humminbird PiranhaMax 215 unit. Compact enough to easily fit in my gear bag for when I rent a boat, or when I'm on my kayak the self-contained unit sits nicely on the deck, secured by bungee cords, with the transducer stuck to the side. 8 AA batteries were enough to last a whole day. I already had a lot of rechargeable AA batteries, so that wasn't a problem.
Depth and temperature are spot-on, which I was able to independently verify. The fish marks seem to work, but can't testify as to how accurate that is, though.
I see the newer units have a rechargeable battery built-in, along with a carry-case integrated into the unit. That sucks for me, as the whole package is much larger and I wouldn't be able to easily use that on my kayak. I just might have to buy another 215 as a backup.
With that kind of budget get a Lowrance X135 it's grey scale, but has lot's of power. You can buy a bracket from Cabela's and a small rechargeable 12V battery. You can probably do it for about $200.00 or so. That's what I use when on rental boats works great everywhere. If you need pics of my set up let me know. It's going to be kind of tough on a tube, but you can always go with a cheaper unit and smaller batteries, but you want as much power you can get which gives you a better return on your sonar.