Sonar/Plotter recommendations for Great Lakes - marking at speed - maybe Garmin?

[vetting]

Helping a buddy replace a decades old chart plotter/sonar and transducer. What are some good transducer and plotter setups for being able to mark bait/salmon while cruising at 15 to 25 mph for Great Lakes fishing?

[Yankee Troller]

Any brand will do, but don't put much stock into the stock transducers. They aren't great for open water trolling.

 

Are you looking for a transom mount or thru-hull option for a transdcuer?

[vetting]

@Yankee Troller

Thru hull.
Been getting a lot of recommendations for B175HW paired with one of the following Garmin units.  
For a 7" the 743xsv.
For a 9" the 943xsv.

For a 12" the 1243xsv.

Gets pretty spendy pretty fast though.  

[Yankee Troller]

B60 is much cheaper and will be fine for Great Lakes fishing. The B175HW would work, but your cone angle while trolling is about half of the B60's. The B60 is a dual frequency transducer. You cruise paying attention to 200khz and fish with 50khz.

 

Also, if you're stuck on Garmin. Unless you want radar, or the option to run radar down, the road look into the ECHOMAP series. I bet it's a little cheaper.

Edited January 14 by Yankee Troller

[vetting]

@Yankee Troller

I actually already have a B60-20tilt hooked up to my Raymarine A77 on my own boat.  I can actually mark fish with this but not at speed.  It also constantly has this issue where you go over a baitball in 150ft of water that is 30ft down and then it thinks you are in 30ft of water until you do a full reset.  I've heard other people say the same thing but that probably a Raymarine issue and not the ducer.  

I also have an axiom 9" with Realvision 3D transmount transducer.  I've never been a fan of this setup and thinking on getting rid of it.   Maybe I just have it setup wrong?  I can hardly get it to mark anything and returns that show up great on the A77 at trolling speed hardly show on the Axiom.  

I was going to install a BoatEye360 camera so I was thinking on adding a Garmin to my boat to so I can use it as the camera screen when we are coming back late at night.  

So I originally started the research looking for gear to upgrade my buddies boat, but I'm thinking I'm going to do the same upgrade.  

 

[Yankee Troller]

9 minutes ago, vetting said:

@Yankee Troller

I actually already have a B60-20tilt hooked up to my Raymarine A77 on my own boat.  I can actually mark fish with this but not at speed.  It also constantly has this issue where you go over a baitball in 150ft of water that is 30ft down and then it thinks you are in 30ft of water until you do a full reset.  I've heard other people say the same thing but that probably a Raymarine issue and not the ducer.  

 

That's a Raymarine issue for sure, and you're not the only one with a Raymarine to have that.

[vetting]

@Yankee Troller
Yeah thats what I figured....ugh now I have more decisions.  
So there will be overlap in frequency between the B60 and B175HW.  
When you set the A77 to 50khz is it still transmitting 200khz on the ducer?  

[Yankee Troller]

I believe so

[Yankee Troller]

Here is a new transducer that I've been running on my Smokercraft. It's a transom mount, which I don't usually recommend. However, with an aluminum boat I don't have the luxury of a thru-hull. It's an Airmar TM165HW, and I've been really impressed with it. Might not be the best for deep water Lake Ontario Salmon fishing as it's only rated to about 500'. 

 

Marking Walleye on Oneida at 34mph.

 

Marking bait at 34mph

 

Fishing for Walleye. Top picture is Lake Erie, and the bottom picture is Oneida Lake.

[Prof T]

Nice resolution. Not being familiar with Humminbirds, were you running High CHIRP? Thinking of going with this transducer on my  older HDS GEN 3

[Yankee Troller]

15 hours ago, Prof T said:

Nice resolution. Not being familiar with Humminbirds, were you running High CHIRP? Thinking of going with this transducer on my  older HDS GEN 3

 

AirmarTM165HW is a high wide chirp transducer. This particular HW is a 30* cone angle.

[Andre wallyandre]

With the Gen-3 you need to run a TM-150 specially at 105 freq. The TM-165 is not compatible with the Gen-3.
I have a few screen shots.

Edited January 21 by Andre wallyandre