Inexpensive Fishfinders
 

I've had enough of Lowrance and I'm looking for opinions on other brands of fishfinders. I use inexpensive fishfinders because I don't need GPS, plotting, mapping, color, etc., just need to see the bottom and hopefully, a few fish. It has to have a transducer that can shoot through the kayak hull and the transducer can't be sticking out the bottom.

I have a couple Garmin GPS units and they are great, but I don't seem to hear that much about their fishfinders. I'm hoping there are a few fishermen who use the lower end fishfinders who might have some observations or opinions.

Why are you over lowrance?

Humminbird Piranhamax 160 user here. Bare bones unit. Black and white display, temp, reads bottom to 600ft, powered with 10 rechargable AA and has lasted me 4 outings with still juice left ( it never fully died before recharging ). I have a thru scupper transducer specifically made for the Prowler. Thru hull is do-able with the factory tramsducer but you wont have temp readings. 2 years of use so far and the only problem I've had was the cheap plastic mounting base cracking around the screws. Easy fix, just poured in epoxy to fill the "webbing". Reading marks takes a bit of training. Overall satisfied especially after scoring it on clearance.

Gonna thread jack here, sorry. I have a eagle cuda 168 my pops bought years ago. I've used it on lakes at its accurate with depth and temps, but structure is iffy and don't even talk about fish. Has anyone had a better experience with this fish finder? If memory serves correct it was cheap, maybe 70 bucks?

Lowrance has really cut corners on quality with their lower priced fishfinders, maybe the more expensive ones as well but I'm only relaying first hand information, but the big reason is their customer service and support. The reason I bought the cheapest Lowrance is that I was worried about poor customer service in case something went wrong and that proved to be the case from start to finish.

I have had an Eagle Cuda 168 on the my kayak for the past ten years or so. It stopped working, that's why I bought a Lowrance Elite 3x to replace it. Turned out to be a bad wire in the transducer harness. I did a test with two brand new Elite 3x fishfinders and the old Cuda 168; the Elite 3x color screen was nice looking, but the Cuda 168 was more accurate across the board. Both fishfinders, in fact most of Lowrance's lower priced units, use the same transducer. Try adjusting the sensitivity on the Cuda 168 and don't use the "fish ID" setting, use the one that shows arcs. I don't really trust fishfinders to find fish, I just use them to find out where they might be.

Until I find a replacement, the Cuda 168 is back on the boat. It may not be the best fishfinder in the world, but it works.

I have an old Eagle Cuda 350 - black and white unit that worked great for the years that I've had it, (though I changed it out earlier this year for a color Elite 4 HDI). I did have a problem with the connector to the transducer though and needed to get a replacement. I called Eagle's customer service number and got connected to...., Lowrance! I guess Lowrance bought out Eagle (or Eagle was a division within Lowrance). The rep told me what transducer to buy.

I ended up having a buddy who had a brand new Lowrance X-4 that he wasn't using and it had the exact same transducer with connector as the one on the Cuda 350. So I just swapped them out, and the ff worked just fine.

To be honest, some of the older fishfinders seemed to work better than the newer color ones do. Less stuff to go wrong with them....

I use a Lowrance HDS 5 and love it.
I cannot comment on Lowrance's customer service since I have never dealt with them.
In the event something does go wrong with my unit, I purchased the warranty from West Marine who has AWESOME customer service and will just replace it on the spot. I'll never have to deal with Lowrance.
Something to maybe think about.

HDS damn straight, and u can take west marines warranty to the bank. West marine is so good, you never have to deal with the retailer.

I totally agree the HDS 5 is awesome so many different ways to set it up for the display that works best for you. I have used a Lowrance DS 50 and the Elite 4 and used a Raymarine Dragonfly 4.7 and the HDS 5 beats then so badly. I can't think of a better FF unless I needed the 7" screen HDS 7, but my eyes aren't that bad yet!

$400-500 would be on the very high end of inexpensive fishfinders and the nearest West Marine is over an hour away, so kind of not a realistic option.

We were all there at one point and in sure like me most will regret wasting money when unit broke without warranty or didn't work well enough.. An hour is nothing compare to waiting a few weeks for a repair from manufacture.. Besides most places to ocean fish are near a WM.
But live and learn and do what's best for you.


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PirahnaMax 170 user here. Freshwater only. I couldn't be happier except that I lost the temp reading when I replaced the original xducer with a true through-hull model. Meaning it is mounted THROUGH the hull, giving a flat unobstructed xducer surface below.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...k/IMG_0020.jpg

And inside:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...k/IMG_0019.jpg

Humminbird still offers that replacement xducer, but they no longer honor the free swap program I used.

Most places in Southern California to ocean fish are near a WM(I assume that's West Marine), that is not the case everywhere in the world. I've bought plenty of stuff from Western Marine for many years, they are a good place to buy marine products, especially convenient if you live in SoCal. Anyway, I'm not interested in a product you need to return on a regular basis.

I read somewhere that a guy bought two Lowrance HDS 5 fishfinders so he could always have a working unit while the other one was being repaired. Seems to be an expensive workaround, one lemon is usually enough for me.

That's very interesting to hear. I'll give that a shot. Thanks! The lower battery usage is definitely a plus!