How To Choose The Best Fish Finder For You

Hobbies Articles | August 30, 2011

One of the best decisions we ever made several years ago was to try using a fish finder on our occasional fishing trips.� Soon our trips turned into regular weekend trips and we brought in more fish than ever before with our fish finder.� Here are some tips to help you find the best fish finder for your needs

I still remember the first time I went out with a friend on their fishing boat and saw him watching a screen that actually showed him where the fish were under the boat.

He was of course looking at a fish finder, on that day fishing took on an entirely different perspective for me and since then I have used dozens of different fish finders, some good, some not so good.

A fish finder can help you catch more fish and make your fishing trip more enjoyable in many ways:

�- It can give you accurate depth information showing you where major shifts in the bottom structure occur
�- Fish finders can often show you obstructions, logs, or weed beds where fish will tend to hang out
�- They can tell you the temperature of the water for those that take that into account when fishing
�- They can identify schools of fish (either smaller bait fish or larger fish to target)

More than anything, these fishing devices can reduce the amount of time you waste trying to catch the big one in areas that clearly do not support fish - either extremely deep locations, locations where there is no sign of fish activity or areas that lack the proper feeding or shelter sought out by fish.

After 20-years of using fish finders, here are 3 aspects you should look at when you go out looking for your own unit to enjoy.�

1. Accuracy/Features:� You will often find that lower-end fish finders lack the components and features that other units have. Transducers are the sensory part of the fish finder so important in gather information from the water. Single-beam transducers will generally be less accurate that dual beam transducers, especially in shallow water.� Also, you'll want to understand the difference between dual-frequncy transducers typically required in deeper water fishing compared with single frequency units good for lake and river fishing. You will also want to know if the fish finder supports temperature sensing on the transducers and/or speed guages as well.�

2. Display:� Having the most robust features doesn't mean a thing if you can't properly see the display - especially on sunny, bright days when digial displays can prove a challenge. The big difference here is between LCD, grayscale and color displays.� Color displays tend to perform much better in challenging conditions.� Also, you want to compare the display screen resolution.�

3. Installation/Mounting and Portability:� Generally speaking fish finder transducers can be of 3 types:

�- Suction cups that can be stuck to the hull of the boat giving you added portability
�- Through the hull mounting where more permanent mounting takes place through the hull
�- Transom mount units
�- And lately some floating transducer models have emerged for more portable remote fish finders

Fish finders can make fishing much more enjoyableArticle Search, once you try one you will wonder how you lived so long without one.�







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