Fishfinders/Chartplotters

[Rick_W]

Any body got a favorite?

Will be mostly brackish water and salt near-shore.

Can't imagine the depth is more than a hundred feet anywhere that I'll be.

Really just want a good clean picture - probably side-scan.

[Stockrex]

Budget ?

[Hotolds442]

I'm running a Garmin 840XS in mine, but it's way overkill for your needs. Awesome unit though...

[Rick_W]

Would like to keep it under $1k.

[Hotolds442]

The Raymarine A65 is probably one of the best units out there for the price, and would have been my choice if I didn't need a larger screen and keypad interface.

[yobuck]

If your fishing inshore as it appears you are, you can get a good unit for well under your budget.
I had the luxery of free electronics from Raymarine when i lived and was guiding in the keys.
Now i buy my own and frankly what i had was way overkill for what i actually needed. Florida sportsman
sells chips showing all the wrecks and known hotspots for the entire state in a regional format. I have most
of the state entered into my current small Hummingbird unit. So i really only need the unit to steer from point a to point b
and the depthfinder keeps me out of trouble while running. I had a large list of spots in the keys but many of them are
also on the chips i now have. My unit has down imaging but not side scanning. I frankly think most of those type features
are pretty much worthless unless you enjoy playing with the units more than fishing. Some days i never even turned my machines
on when i was in the keys. If things were slow i used the fishfinder, but otherwise i just used my waypoints and kept moving till we had fish.
Tide and current are also very important and that requires knowledge of the area more so than the electronics.

[Rick_W]

I appreciate all the info.

We don't know the area so I can see using the unit a lot initially to learn the lay of the land and then using it less and less.

Our boat is coming with a Humminbird PiranhaMax 153 (gray-scale I believe).

We'll use it as-is initially but I can see wanting to upgrade soon.