I haven't personally done it before. I was considering adding the transom mounted Panoptix transducer to my boat at the time I purchased her coming up on almost 5 years ago now. But at the time, the Panoptix was only rated to I believe 200' in depth, and that was in freshwater. In saltwater, they said it would likely be only about half that depth, which if I'm fishing for kings, I'm quite regularly fishing in 100'+ of water. They do have the $5k thru hull Panoptix transducer option, but I didn't and really still don't want to spend $5k+ just for a transducer. The LiveScope options appear to mount to your kicker/trolling motor and have heard it's kind of more for freshwater/bass fishermen that are looking at structures and so forth. Not that you can't use it in the saltwater, as it looks like the more expensive version of the LiveScope has a depth of 500' in freshwater or 350' in saltwater. But I don't believe they have a transom mount option, it looks like it has to be mounted to the kicker motor, and then turns when you turn the kicker motor around. Which also isn't a very good option for my setup.
First, where is your boat located or where do you tow it to boat/fish, Edmonton Alberta is not really near big lakes or the sea.
As Mustang already mentioned, the smaller Panoptix transducer are for shallow fresh water fishing, if fishing is the reason for the Panoptix system.
Chris
I had the smaller one and it was great out to about 120 ft in salt around Neah Bay. Primary use was for Black Rock Fish (Sea Bass) and shallow Ling Cod. The transducer was mounted on an aluminum rod off a scotty mount so I could swivel it around to locate rock and I could see exactly how many fish were in my target area. Pissed me off sometimes when a big ling would just watch my bait and not bite. Where it made a big difference was in helping ensure I was only fishing good rocks during the short slack current when the rock fish move to above their rocks.
Yep, the cost is the reason i don't have the Garrmin Panoptix PS70 transducer
First, where is your boat located or where do you tow it to boat/fish, Edmonton Alberta is not really near big lakes or the sea.
As Mustang already mentioned, the smaller Panoptix transducer are for shallow fresh water fishing, if fishing is the reason for the Panoptix system.
Chris
The PS30 transducer per the Garmin site says it's good down to 300', though I imagine since it doesn't specify whether that's saltwater or freshwater... that it's likely freshwater, and that saltwater would probably only be good to about half that depth, or maybe even less. If the PS30 was good to an actual 300' in saltwater, for the $1,600 price tag, I'd likely consider it a bit more. That being said, and as mentioned above, if it's only good down to 100' or so in saltwater, I oftentimes fish for king salmon at deeper depths than that, which kind of negates the purpose of having the Panoptix to begin with if it can't reach the depths that I'm wanting to fish at....