Fish Finders

My 10 year old Lowrance took a dump this weekend. Blows the fuse every time I try to turn it on. Sent Lowrance an email and their helpful response was its probably the head unit.

So it looks like I'm in the market for a new fish finder.

First off who has the most knowledgeable staff as far as marine electronics go (Seattle area)?

Anybody have a newer one they love? Needs to have good marine charts and side scan.

Speaking of side scan, how useful do people find this? Is at all helpful in rivers? Ie. Slack waters where coho might be hiding?

1. How much do you want to spend????

2. I recommend that you go to either Cabela's or Bass Pro, and hope you get a person that is knowledgeable on many units....some of the new units are unreal with the things they can do....

Good luck....

I have an cheaper Eagle GPS/finder that's entirely adequate except for one big problem: it's difficult to turn map tracking on/off. A big distraction you don't need underway.

So eventually the best tracks that I wanted saved "fall off" and the busy areas are a mess of useless/bad tracks.

I bought a Garmin 94sv on closeout (the one with buttons, no touch screen). I love it. Easy to use, and has a good chart. I haven't found a use for the side scan yet, but I have just started playing with it.

I have side scan and down scan on our Lowrance HDS gen 3, 7 inch screen, side scan is great for lake fishing for spotting which side of the boat the fish are on, also shows details on structure on bottom. It's really good to see in detail what is under the boat or off the side.I don't think side scan will be much good at showing salmon in rivers off to the side. Might want to check out Panopix, spendy but 360 degrees.