Thread: Fish Finder?

I have the HB 383Combo and it is a good unit, but if I had it to do over I would have spent the extra money to get a 5' screen. If you don't need the GPS feature you can save a few bucks too.
SeaRay

I have a GPS. I was just looking at a Garmin 500c, looks like a good one for under $300. Anyone have any experience with it? Thanks

I have a couple of 570's, a 597 HD DI, and a 160--all are HB of course and love all of them. I can say having the GPS on the FF is very nice but if you have one it will save you a bit of money. The 570 is a good unit for a pretty cheap price.

What does the Switch Fire setting mean? The HB 570 DI has it.

Most of our units have the SwitchFire menu.
Basically it is a filter setting.
More precisely it turns on and off the Time Variable Gain (TVG) filtering curve. What this does is turns on filtering immediately after the unit transmits and slowly turns it down the deeper the sonar signal gets (over “time” as a sonar unit translates time as water depth for us). The closer to the transducer that a fish is, the stronger the reflected sonar signal will be back to that transducer. The same fish at a farther distance from the transducer will reflect back less sonar energy. When TVG is switched on (SwitchFire menu is set to Clear Mode setting) that same fish will be shown with the same sonar signal strength on the display of the unit. It also has the affect of showing less clutter and other smaller or weaker sonar returns. With TVG turned off (SwitchFire menu is set to Max Mode) the unit does not do any of this filtering so a small fish that is close to the transducer could be shown as a stronger and bigger sonar return than the same sized fish would be displayed that was farther away from the transducer; possibly even larger and stronger than a larger fish would be that is farther away from the transducer. It also will show more of the smaller and weaker sonar returns.

I use Switchfire Max mode in most water conditions deeper than 10 ft...

Brushpiles really "pop" out on the screen in Switchfire Max mode...

I turn Switchfire on Max mode and then adjust the Sensitivity in the Sonar Express menu to a point that random dots (clutter) start showing in the water column ...

There will be a fairly "thick" line of surface clutter showing but that doesnt affect the brush image in deeper water...in shallower than 10 ft the surface clutter will "merge" with the top of the brush image and make the image unable to descern between the surface clutter and the brush returns...so in less than 10 ft of water I use Switchfire Clear mode...

Rickie

Larry,

Some very good suggestions, if it was me in that price range go for at least a 5" screen with color

I also been looking to upgrade and its easy to fall into something that's really expensive, I'm going to try to stick to my price range, good luck and hope you don't flatten your wallet

2d is 2d. Black and white or color. You can fancy it up, still 2d sonar. If you want an upgrade, wait to at least get a DI unit. Or go out on a boat with a friend that has DI and then decide. I had a bunch of 2D units in the past. 10-15. Not a single one of them made a significant difference in my fishing. GPS made a HUGE change in my fishing. I could find and mark waypoints on spots that I find, or create on my own, and return to them. DI and SI allow you to find spots with a much greater degree of accuracy (in terms of knowing what the spots are right away). Just food for thought, and adding an opinion.