best fish finder for the $$$

Sparky, I can tell you that on Oologah and Keystone I am seeing monstrous herds of shad that kind of stratify at a certain depth and run for sometimes 50-100 yards. They are so thick that I can just barely make out the brush that I know is there and I don't even drop a jig in those areas cause I have never been bit there. So- what Fishers said X 2.

I kinda thought something was wrong i only noticed that at a certain depth any shallower there was nothing . I seen the same thing for about 100 yards or so like crappie ciller said

I kinda thought something was wrong i only noticed that at a certain depth any shallower there was nothing . I seen the same thing for about 100 yards or so like crappie ciller said hes seen

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Originally Posted by Crappie Reaper

Docile fish, shad, clutter, but mainly just fish. I don't know how you would adjust the sensitivity on the Helix, but it looks like it's working fine. Take that unit and follow some creek channels using your GPS and you'll start seeing a lot of new things. Look for trees that have a bunch of bigger white dots grouped in them. Notice the depth of the dots to start your baits out at. Good luck!

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Attachment 227946 What Reaper said in beautiful Lowrance HD illustration! (pic from last winter on Skiatook) Those are crappie at 15-20 feet deep and those are shad below them down to the bottom. Notice the spacing between the crappie is greater than the shad and that the dots for the crappie are larger. A note about shad this year. You will find many lakes have places in them that are "carpeted" with shad for hundreds of yards, in some lakes it is astonishing. Kaw is one of them. Starting at 15 feet deep down to 20+ feet, just an absolute astounding layer of shad that just keeps going and going over huge areas, A.K.A. - carpet shad. Gonna be some FAT fish going forward!

Carpet shad is the perfect term for what we are seeing this winter and if we get a big winter die off it will look like 3' of shag carpet on the bottom!

C2 then it is time to break out the catfish gear and clean house on blues

I just purchased the GARMIN STRIKER 7DV for $399 best locator i have ever used.

Not sure it matters what you get, none of them say fish here!!! (YET), Don't think the top end units probably have much different technology from one brand to the next. The main thing is paying close attention those times you know you are on fish pulling them in the boat and remembering what they are looking like later. Time on the water needs to be maximize with the help of these tools, when you get confidence in what your doing, pieces of the puzzle start coming together quickly, I first bought my hds gen 1 8 or so years ago, when hardly a soul was around to help me, way before having access to the minds of crappie.com members. quickest way to learn confidence in a depth finder is fish with some one who knows what they are doing and pay very close attention, ask every ? you can, and soak up information like a sponge. I love peoples skepticism when I tell them we should be getting bit and they roll their eyes then THUMP Just my 2 cents though.

I'm glad I saw this thread. I wasn't really in the market for a new fishfinder since I already have a HDS unit, but by the time I buy the sidescan unit for it I'm just going to buy the Garmin unit. I'll still use the HDS for the maps and marking waypoints, etc.

Any of you that run the Garmin already, do you have it mounted on your transom or trolling motor?

I'd like to mount it to my trolling motor as long as there's not interference and if the sidescan would work properly at trolling motor speeds.

The garmin striker 7sv has the side vu and the transducer is trolling motor and transom mount real thin transducer comes with both mounting plates and clamp. the DV is down scan only