bestfishfinders

You really need to specify how you will be using your fishfinder before you can get any meaningful recommendations.

Will your primary usage be navigation? Bottom type discrimination? Visualizing fish in the water column or near the bottom? How deep do you fish? Would side scan be useful for you? Will you have an autopilot or radar? How much are you looking to spend?

Each brand and model has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Here is the link that he meant to post: https://bestfishfinders.website/
 
Honestly, the best fish finder is have a friend who really knows where the fish are. I am not joking: I have been fortunate to have known a person who taught me where to look, what to look for and more importantly when to look. At that time he used Loran and an ancient sounder.
I understand your confusion, I have been looking myself at upgrading one of my units. For me definitely CHIRP, Downscan and transom mount transducer. Although some features like forward scan and side scan would be nice I can't justify all the expense for the amount of fishing I do. I can be happy just catching sea robins!

I also advise caution when looking at the Best of 2019 product sites. I will check them out to get leads but then do all the research I can find from fishing/boating forums, sometimes even Amazon. It is amazing how different the reviews can be.

Support is important and the Best sites don't really address that. The user friendliness of the equipment is important too. It helps to actually play with the units at shows and marine stores if possible. I still after many years have problems making config changes on my boat that has both Garmin and Lowrance plotters/fishfinders. I forget how to do things and some units are a lot more intuitive than others.

No mater what you select, todays equipment is so far advanced from just a few years ago and whatever you go with will be wonderful:)
 
I forget how to do things and some units are a lot more intuitive than others.

Me too! I have a Humminbird setup on my Grady right now that going to become a Simrad Evo3. I dread the learning curve. I've got a Raymarine a78 on my skiff, which I never got to completely understand. The higher end fishfinders are all now multifunction displays and the software that supports them is very complex. It's often the same software used on large cruising yachts and sailboats. You really only need to use a small number of features to navigate and to look for fish. But getting the features you want to be set up correctly has become a real chore.

I fish with a lot of other guys on their boats, so I have come familiar with all of the different brands over the years. But I have to admit that the newest Garmin on my neighbor's boat had me stumped. I was never able to even set up a custom view while we were out on the water, so we were stuck with the default views until we got back and I was able to read the instructions. Intuitive they are not.
 
I have to agree on the friend or your knowledge. I can't tell you how many times I've caught fish when I didn't see anything on the fishfinder and conversely the inability to get a bite when they where laying on the bottom in herds sunning themselves. I think most are decent enough for the average person. Go with what you have either experience with or most comfortable with.
 
CHIRP has been way over-hyped. The ability to scan across multiple frequencies produces better target separation and increased sensitivity for spotting fish and bait up in the water column. You see real arches (rather than the artificial ones produced by older Navico units) rather than blobs. But the downside is that CHIRP sucks for seeing growth and fish right on the bottom as well as for discriminating hard vs soft bottom. It's also hard to track bottom when up on plane with most transducers operating on a CHIRP setting. A fixed 200 kHz frequency is much better for tracking bottom at high speed at least out to about 100 ft.

I bottom fish a lot in the Gulf of Mexico. I never count on actually seeing grouper on the machine. I look for live hard bottom, which most CHIRP units cannot see. That's why I keep a fixed frequency transducer connected as well as a CHIRP transducer. It sounds strange, but the ability to distinguish hard vs soft bottom types is determined by the quality of the transducer. CHIRP transducers have low Q ratings, which quenches the ringing between the transmit and receive pulse signals. These higher quality transducers won't show longer bottom "tails" over hard bottom the way that cheaper fixed frequency transducers often will. The tails are produced by the longer ring time when signals bounce off of the more reflective hard bottom.

Another feature that is mostly marketing is Down Vision. Why would anybody think that a grayscale image could contain more information than a multi-color 2D image? While it's cool when a wreck or downed tree looks more like the real thing with Down Vision, you get enough info to know what you are over from a color 2D image in almost all cases.

Maybe I'm an old fart (OK, I am an old fart), but I can't say that the fancy modern units provide much more info than the old black and white paper scratchers did over 40 years ago.

The best advice for anybody looking at new fishfinders is to figure out what you need to do. Then chose a unit that does just that and nothing more. You'll save a ton of money.
 
Doc,
Good and enlightening feedback. Since just about all of my fishing is bottom fishing, seeing the bottom and structure is important. In many instances, I need to see structure so that I can fish the edge and not the 'meat' of the structure. I may not catch as many fish but I lose a lot fewer rigs:) It pains me to lose 5 or 6 rigs just to be able to keep one fish.Can you imagine how much lead is in the ocean?

Regarding the comment on getting familiar with plotter/sonar menus and operation; I have my display mounted on brackets and I remove them when not out on the boats. I also have spare power cables connected to a 12v transformer. Each season before the first trip, I power up the units at home, make sure they are working and spend a bit of time getting familiar (AGAIN) with the menus and options. It helps a lot but some units just are not intuitive and when at sea it isn't always possible to just play around looking for the option I want to change. I find that my older Lowrance HDS is one of those that I have a heck of a time remembering how to change some options.
 
The key to precise location over a wreck or reef is to use a marker buoy and a narrow beam transducer. I use an Airmar B60 running at 200 kHz. This has an 12-degree beam that illuminates a 22 ft circle at 100 ft. Using a wider beam or lower frequency illuminates too large an are for precise positioning. Knowing the diameter of the area your sonar is seeing at any particular depth lets you set up right on the edge of a wreck or ledge. If I'm setting up on a wreck in 100 ft and set back on the anchor until the bottom just returns to the actual seabed depth, I know that I am about 11 ft from the wreck.

Here is a useful calculator that you can use for any transducer:

http://www.airmar.com/bottom-calculator.html
 
Ah, back to geometry class. That was a while ago:)
 
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