Getting back after them

First post here. I haven't had a boat in about 20 years and my wife was encouraging me to spend more time with our son instead of working so much on the farm. He loves to fish, so I suggested that I buy a boat, and she agreed! I'm a cheapskate so I tried to find the best deal out there and wound buying a 96 Bass Tracker Tournament 17 with a 40 Force on it. It's in pretty good shape for it's age. I've had to do some rewiring, and such but she's water ready now.

When I last had a boat, my electronics would tell me how deep the water was and the water temp. That was about it. My fishing success or more likely lack of, was limited to fishing tree tops that I could see above the water, or blindly running across a hump that held fish. I had NO idea that fish finders had come such a long way since I last owned one. I have been researching and the Humminbird Mega images are absolutely incredible. I don't think I can swing one of those but I'm looking more towards the Helix 7 CHIRP SI GPS G2N. I want a finder that's good enough to find structure, check boat docks, find suspended fish, and find bream beds.

Now for a couple of questions. How much better will the images be if I go with the HD transducer upgrade?

Are there other units out there that are as good that are cheaper?

I'm primarily a crappie and bream fisherman, but my son does like to bass fish so it will be used for those 3 species.

Our home lake is Guntersville and we can be from the farm to the water in 15 minutes.

If I'm headed in the wrong direction with the Helix, let me know which way to head.

Any and all advice is appreciated. Thanks.

The best advice I think would be to buy the biggest screen sonar you can afford. The Helix 7 would be the starting point as I would surely not buy anything smaller(been there done that). Now I have the 7" screen sonars on my boat and wish they were bigger screens. I get by with them for now but later I am hoping I can afford to buy bigger screen units one of these days(when I win the lottery):Rofl So keep in mind if you can possibly go bigger "just do it" you will be able to see a lot more.:twocents

Scrat is right, you will never say
" I wish I had bought a smaller FF!"


Sent from my iPhone using Crappie.com

Here is info comparing the Hi Def SI xducer and the Compact SI xducer ...

HD vs Compact transducer

Rickie

Thanks Rickie, it appears to make a good bit of difference.