Hi all,

I'm toying with the idea of buying a feature finder for my bait boat - a waverunner sport.

I am wondering whether I should be looking at a 'proper' fish finder than will run off the boat battery, like a tolson tf500 (which looks fairly basic) or a deeper chirp.

As I see it the chirp will give me better detail and can be used independently of the boat but at the cost of having to be charged and risk of getting snagged on surface snags.
I suppose the ultimate would be a raymarine dragonfly or alike but this is going to cost substantially more and I'm not really sure which models would fit my boat.

What options have people gone for and which would you choose?

Cheers,
James.

In reply to Post #1
Chirp , if bait boats are banned you've still got the castable option

A Deeper is a versatile bit of kit, although I'd be more inclined to get a Dragonfly fitted as it's much more accurate which doesn't leave any second guessing. You can get a modded Raymarine Dragonfly from Fish Eye Camera's for around £500, basically it's been striped of its outer case just leaving the main board and an antenna fitting which you join to the supplied booster plus solder two wires + and -. You'd have to fit it yourself, that's if a Dragonfly would fit in your boat?

I've just got the raymarine fitted to my bait boat the actual transducer is fitted to the outside of the boat rather than inside and it was just over £700 fitted

Have you looked into whether the range on a Deeper will be enough for what you need. It may be down to user error but when we borrowed a baitboat last year and attached a Deeper to it we found that it started to lose connection after about 60yds.

Thanks all for the thoughts - had looked at the raymarine range but don't particuarly want to spend that much cash (it would be worth more than the boat) and as mentioned I'm not really sure it will fit.

The ability to use the deeper without the boat is appealing - regarding range I currently don't fish anywhere that I'd be casting/boating over the 100m stated range of the deepers. However if these ranges aren't acheivable then it may be an issue.

In reply to Post #7
Range can be extended quite easily - Have a look here

=Vonets range extender

Have gone for a deeper (Chirp), planning on mounting it exterbaply via a pivotting arm. Couldn't find any info on whether I could fit a Raymarine or alike and appears the consensus is that it'll be better than the toslon.

Will see what kind of range I can get out of the box with my tablet, if it is an issue there appear to be a few range extenders amount for a reasonable price.

Cheers,
James.

I used a Deeper chirp on an arm for a bit when fishing from a boat. It does a job for getting a rough guide to the depth, but even when sat right next to it it's glitchy and cuts out every now and then.

Now using a Raymarine dragonfly after a recommendation on here and the Raymarine is on a completely different level to the chirp. Considering the price difference is relatively small the difference in quality and useful information is vast.

In reply to Post #10
The Dragonfly is a great bit of kit and not that expensive in the scheme of things. More importantly than anything, it takes the guessing out of the equation. I found that as great as the Deeper Chirp was, I never really felt that confident with it, not so with the Dragonfly.