ChrisS

Hi there, I have a 20' Lund that I use for Oneida walleye, occasional finger lakes trout, and (as often as I can) Lake Ontario salmon. This came with a 10-year old humminbird and probably a 15 year old gamin something or other and a newer 24v minnkota bow mount with the iPilot and remote. I replaced the console unit with my helix 5 that I used for kayak and ice fishing. And moved the older HB to the bow. I mostly use the bow motor to autopilot steer while trolling. For this spring, I'm looking at getting a new console graph and moving the helix 5 to my bow (I rarely fish off the bow maybe some jigging). I was thinking of getting a new HB 12 or 15 Helix G4N and possibly pairing it with a new bow mount 24V motor. There are quite a few options and I was curious if there was anyone with recommendations that they came up. Is there a big benefit for going with a Solix. Are any of the MK motors with a built in transducer backwards compatible somehow with my HB Helix 5? ETA: probably around a $5k budget for everything. Would like to keep it under, but if there are must have features, I could be convinced to go over. Any thoughts are much appreciated.

3/5 yesterday afternoon before the storms chased us off, lost a decent fish about 20ft behind the boat. Fished 120 to 180, temps down around 110. Bigger hen pushing 20lbs came on a DR spoon parked in 52F, two that came unbuttoned hit a DR FF parked in 48F. Smallish steelhead on a DR spoon. A buck on a deeper diver FF on 1 1/2 out 225. All fish came on a SW troll. No hits any other direction.

Seas laid down yesterday afternoon, more than enough to take my boat out to 500-600 FOW. Unfortunately I couldn't find fish, but it looked like most of the charter boats did. Not too many people inside and there was a definite scum line out around 350 FOW that moved inshore through the day. Found temps down around 120-130 feet and I did mark some small bait balls and a few fish here and there, but nothing to write home about. Probably my last trip up this summer. I need bigger weights, I'm running 12lbs, but I was getting ~40-50 ft of blowback making the fish hawk almost unusable.

https://usa.fishermap.org/depth-map/champlain-lake/ To put on a graph? Or otherwise? I don't the answer to the first. To the second, you can download Navionics or Humminbird OneBoat ($25/yr sub required) to your phone and use the charts there.

I splurged and got the X4D with bluetooth. It's handy, I have my one boat app and the Fish Hawk app on my ipad, it's nice extra screen for that stuff. This was my first fish hawk and I did have some issues setting it up and getting working right. I was getting all sorts of wild numbers or blank screens, thought it was the probe moving in and out of the cone of the transducer at first, but I'm running 12 lb balls in 50 FOW, blow back isn't that bad at 2mph. I fiddled with the transducer angle and that helped some, but it would still be weird numbers. Let my ignorance be a help to other people down the road who are searching for answers. Two BIG things: 1) make sure the probe is right side up (I'm an idiot) so it's shooting the beam back to the boat and not to the bottom of the lake. 2) there is a gain setting in the display that should be 15 as the default and mine was set at 5, which was too weak of a signal.

Fished yesterday evening to take advantage of the calm seas. Apparently I was the only one? I only saw two other boats out on the horizon and two others motor in. The strong blow over the weekend seems to have pushed the cold water out as temps were down around 110-120 and water was ~72F at 70 ft. Only had enough time to make a couple of passes and marked very little out to 320 FOW or so, came back in shallow and marked some bait and a couple of fish in 140 FOW, but was only able to make one short pass. That was it. Pulled lines at dark and motored in.

Fished this morning out of Oswego. Picked up one dink ~5 lber around 10:30 on a spin doctor/fly off a dipsey in 120 ft down around 60. I had 50F at around 70-75 ft down and kept speed between 2 and 2.7. Decent rollers were out and it made trolling south an exercise in constantly checking and adjusting speed and depth. Marked a couple of looky-lous checking out the ball on the rigger but nothing else. Marked just a couple of good bait balls and some action on the bottom in a couple of other places. Dock report from other folks coming off at noon was pretty much the same: scattered fish and very limited action. Most people seemed to be way out.

Thanks, I managed to squeeze the Fishhawk transducer in there. It's working for now until I re-run some cables to hide them. I'm going to mount the 798 transducer on the trolling motor and remove the garmin and airmar transducer. I'm going to put the Helix 5 on the console for now until I replace with a bigger graph. I was also curious about the state of the state of humminbirds and if there was anything I needed to get without getting into the mega live prices.

Good morning LOU captains, looking for some advice on a new sonar system for my boat. I recently picked up a 2017 Lund Impact 1850 for use on Oneida, Finger Lakes, and occasional Lake O trips. The boat came with an console mounted HB 798ci and a Garmin something or other in the bow with an Airmar66 'ducer on the transom. Both of the transom ducers are mounted on a smallish board and I picked up a Fishhawk and need to put that 'ducer on the transom too (it would be tough to fit another transducer on the board). I've spent a lot of time trawling through the threads on here looking for inspiration. I have a G2 Helix 5 unit that I really like and could use that in the bow, but I don't know how much bow fishing I really plan on doing to need a graph up there. Not sure. I intend on getting a new console unit this winter probably a Helix or Solix 10-12 inch size to take advantage of the iPilot on the bow motor for auto-pilot. I'd get a newer helix 7 for the bow (and I could use that for ice fishing too). I'd like to avoid having 3-4 transducers off the transom or having to install a new board and drill more holes. So, I'm looking for some advice on the more advanced networked systems. If you were putting together a new system on the boat, what would you get? Can I get away with two transducers on the transoms, one for the hawk and one for the humminbirds and use a Y-cable or network them?

I've got that Scotty laketroller down rigger and I used a mount with two t-track attachments to try and spread the load a little bit. I paddled with it a couple of times, and it's a pain. I switched over to torpedo divers and redirig instant downrigger. I've got a leadcore set-up that I use sometimes too. I recently picked up a bixpy, so I'm going to give the downrigger a try again, but only if I need to go really deep. Even if underpower, that rigger can be finicky to deploy and manage in a kayak.