# Fish finder/chart plotter



## Little Mac (Apr 29, 2015)

Looking @ getting a new fish finder/chart plotter. Which would you recommend between the Hummingbird 698ci HD SI or the Lowrance Elite 7 Chirp. And which is more user friendly. thanks


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## GaryI (Mar 18, 2015)

Little Mac,

I can't comment on the Hummingbird, but I have had the Lowrance Elite 7 Chirp for 9 months now. I have been very happy with it and I think it is well worth the money. Check out one of my recent posts for more info on it and the settings I use.

I don't think any of these units are particularly user-friendly. The instructions are minimal. They spend all of their time cramming it full of features that many of us will never use, and no effort to provide guidance on how to use the important ones. Nevertheless, it is a great unit. Plus, their phone tech support has been excellent. You just need to spend time on the water to learn it. 90% of the time I run it split screen -- 1/3 of the left side of the screen with the GPS map, and 2/3 on the right side with the sonar. Happy to show mine to you if you live near Lake Livingston.

Gary


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## Chunknwind (Jul 28, 2015)

You might want to check out the new garmin striker. Sv.Dv. Gps. Chirp. 7" screen. For around 500 garmin marine .com/2016


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## Steven H (Jan 15, 2006)

You can get shots like this with a Humminbird, proof is in the pics. But I could not make these bite, helps to find them, not to catch them!! These are most likely big blue cats.


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## cwhitney (Sep 9, 2014)

One thing I noticed is that the Humminbird 698ci HD SI has side imaging capability, but the Lowrance Elite 7 does not. If you want the side imaging feature, you will need to look at the Lowrance HDS 7. I have an HDS7 Gen 2 (Gen 3 is on the market now) and it provides pretty good screen shots too.


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## Little Mac (Apr 29, 2015)

Thanks guys. I've been reading your posts Gary & I'm leaning more towards the Lowrance. Might have to take you up on that offer before I buy I don't live on the lake but do have a place up there in Holiday Villages & I'm up just about every weekend. Might contact you after the first of the year as I only have off on Sunday's from November through the end of December


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## BobBobber (Aug 29, 2015)

I have the original HDS7 Gen 1. Not user friendly and lots of menus and button pushing. :headknock

BUT, I really like the Navionics overlay satellite map. You can see things like trees, bridges, buildings, water towers, etc. Beats GPS with cartoon drawings of water bodies. Get yours with a satellite overlay chip, and you'll enjoy that.

Also bought Humminbird later version of 5" screen for side finding. Wish I had bigger screen but my CC only has room for these two finders. Small side finder screens look like snow storms with some flakes supposed to be fish. But it shows where trees are underwater, so you know where the cover is for the fish.

They both work at same time, because frequencies are different.


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## GaryI (Mar 18, 2015)

Little Mac - you live in the same neighborhood as Ducktracker! Cool.

Just send me a private message when you have time and you want to see the unit in action. I live two miles south of Onalaska at the end of FM3186.


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## Gofish2day (May 9, 2006)

I have a Lowrance HDS8 and love it but that Hum bird shot is very clear. I can't get clear like that.
One reason I didn't get the Hum bird is the big letters at the bottom blocking part of the screen. You can't get rid of them and it takes up room.


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## Ducktracker (Aug 1, 2011)

Little Mac - I'm in holiday village also. I'm up most every other weekend also. We need to get together. Garyl really knows the in and outs of the fish finder. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Little Mac (Apr 29, 2015)

Ducktracker said:


> Little Mac - I'm in holiday village also. I'm up most every other weekend also. We need to get together. Garyl really knows the in and outs of the fish finder.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Sounds good


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## GaryI (Mar 18, 2015)

Little Mac,

This is the post that I meant to direct you to below. Sorry for the confusion.

Gary


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

If you are having problems with getting a clear screen on your sonar unit try using a deer feeder 12 volt battery for the power source for a test.
Many times it is electrical interference causing it so many other systems run out of the fuse panel.
Running it from a small battery by itself is a good test to see if that is the problem.
If it is the culprit then try running power cord by itself straight from battery. It often makes a huge difference.


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## lx22f/c (Jun 19, 2009)

shadslinger said:


> If you are having problems with getting a clear screen on your sonar unit try using a deer feeder 12 volt battery for the power source for a test.
> Many times it is electrical interference causing it so many other systems run out of the fuse panel.
> Running it from a small battery by itself is a good test to see if that is the problem.
> If it is the culprit then try running power cord by itself straight from battery. It often makes a huge difference.


And make sure it is shielded. Makes a difference for sure!


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

lx22f/c said:


> And make sure it is shielded. Makes a difference for sure!


It sure does, the difference between an isolated power cord and one connected to other systems in any way are dramatic. 
I used to use a 5" "Cuda" monoscreen cheapo for many years when guiding and found fish with it everyday I went, it was an effective tool. One time the power cord got cut and I ran it straight from a deer feeder battery and I was amazed at the difference. It looked like the ads on the side of the box, lol! Since then I take care to make sure it is not getting interference that causes clutter on the screen.

Not to derail the post, but coming home from Fort Worth today we crossed the lake on 190.
What a mess! The Kickapoo basin did look a little less brown colored. And there is plenty of more water coming from up river.
Looks like it's flounder fishing time.


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## Little Mac (Apr 29, 2015)

*Decision made*

Looks like it's the Lowrance Elite 7 Chirp. Now to get it mounted & figured out lol. I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions & will definitely try the settings that you use Gary.


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## GaryI (Mar 18, 2015)

Hey, congrats, Little Mac! That was quick. I think you'll love it. Make sure you have the right transducer (83/200/455/800). When I bought mine, the wrong transducer was supplied and I had issues until they supplied the right one.

Still happy to show you mine if you still want to, or to go out with you if you are having trouble with the settings. You should see tons of fish on the lake anytime, once you have it set up correctly.


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## Little Mac (Apr 29, 2015)

Sounds good Gary I'm sure I'll take you up on the offer but it won't be till after the first of the year. Academy had it on sale & couldn't pass it up. $499. And it does have the correct transducer


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

WTG Little Mac! 
That sounds like a real bargain to me. A good price for a lot of viable and useful options and super power/performance.

I have not been keeping up with the newer technology after buying my HDS 10 Gen 2. It was the top of the heap when I bought it, and I got all of the bells and whistles.
I probably would have not bought it if my son, Lee, had not been working with me and living here. 
I knew he could teach me about it and how to run through the menus, options and settings, etc,...stuff that stumps old timers like me.
He really set it up personalized for me, as I am color blind in certain ranges of the visible spectrum. He learned it on the job and then took it way past what I could relate to other people. I still operate it in a intuitive manner. So relating it to others is not my forte, but I still can teach basics and some tricks about running one.

One of the best improvements at the time I bought mine was down scan / side scan. And this was my first color screen sonar to have.
I found my hunches regarding what was bait or game fish (feeding, suspend or resting on bottom) was very close. 
Having it validated by the HDS unit was sweet.

One of the hardest things for people to do is to _trust_ that what is showing on the screen is really fish, and at an advanced level be able to trust what kind, in broad terms, of fish it is. 
At the very advanced level a person can tell what kind of fish it is, and if they are feeding or resting and feeling or safe for bait fish.
Lee used to say most people who came to him for sonar teaching had myths to dispel and serious trust issues regarding what is on the screen. To most beginners the unit is a Mystery black box full of some kind of science voodoo that works for others but not for them. That is the first issue to address, then when people understand the basics of how sonar actually, physically works, they can trust that what they see on the screen is really something at that certain depth down in the water under the boat, then they can move on quick with operating one.

I am still picking up new to me tips all of the time and work to dispel my myths I have about sonar and how to operate the unit, because it is still way more cable of things than I am able to do with it.
I felt like I was cheating when I first used it!
Like "The Fish can't hide from me!" cheating, of course the more I learn about operating the unit the more I see they can still hide if you don't look close and slow, real slow.
Anyway I did not look at what was being produced after I got my unit because it seemed nothing as earth shaking as down/side scan had been was coming out.

Some time ago my son said that the next trick should be put in a unit should be a way for people to trust that what they were looking at was either bait OR game( predator) fish on the screen (of course carp/buffalo/drum are the wild cards). 
I think that is a gigantic help if you can differentiate bait, _especially schools of bait_, from bigger fish.
So I see on the packet that is being done, and for five hundred bucks! 
That is cool, I paid a heavy price for mine, but is still a workhouse and been well worth the $.
Post up and tell us how it goes.


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## GaryI (Mar 18, 2015)

SS,

Great post as usual. A few thoughts:

1. Your thoughts on having trust and confidence in your unit are spot on and should be required reading for all fisherman. I was finally able to make that jump when I was parked over a school of white bass, had caught all that I cared to catch, and then spent the rest of my day playing with the unit and tweaking the settings. I really developed a sense of understanding, and confidence, that day. Now, with the proper confidence, I:
- don't even start fishing until I see a school of fish
- don't fish very long for suspended schools
- don't burn nearly as much gas trolling aimlessly
- am able to tell the difference between white bass, bait fish, and everything else
and
- when I see a school on the bottom and can't catch them right away, I have more patience, stick with it, and try different lure presentations until something works.

In short, I am just a lot more productive than I was before I didn't trust my unit.

2. One thing I don't understand yet is why I am not seeing more correlation between the locations of schools of white bass and schools of bait fish. In other words, I often see schools of white bass, and I often see schools of bait fish, but it is not that often that I see them together (except in the summer when the white bass are top schooling). Perhaps that makes sense, since if I was a school of bait fish and sensed a school of white bass coming, I wouldn't stick around too long either. 

3. I recently tweaked my neighbor's settings on his HDS 7 Gen 2, so I was able to compare it directly to my newer Elite 7 Chirp. After I dialed the HDS sonar settings in properly, there wasn't that much difference between the two units. But I did feel that I was able to see better detail and a more refined picture on the Elite 7. Not sure if that was due to the transducer, the unit itself, or just my imagination.

Gary


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

"2. One thing I don't understand yet is why I am not seeing more correlation between the locations of schools of white bass and schools of bait fish. In other words, I often see schools of white bass, and I often see schools of bait fish, but it is not that often that I see them together (except in the summer when the white bass are top schooling). Perhaps that makes sense, since if I was a school of bait fish and sensed a school of white bass coming, I wouldn't stick around too long either. "

That is an excellent question, one I have a personnel theory about.
Livingston is full of shad, it has an incredible baitfish population.
There are a lot of white bass too, but they eat shad by hanging off the side or top of a rise, or the side of a slope, some kind of cover where they know schools of shad will travel over and they can ambush them with ease.
The top water action you see when shad are flying out of the water and white bass making it sound like popcorn going off, those fish have gathered a school of shad and made an umbrella under them and drove them to the top where there is nowhere else to go.
That takes a lot of work on their part, so they will hide by an ambush point and wait for them if they can.
There are a discrete number of appropriate ambush points in any area of the lake, that is why many of the great white bass spots stay that way for so long.
Those spots change as the seasons and conditions do.

Suspended white bass are most often suspended because there is a thermocline that keeps the dissolved oxygen in the upper water column in the hot summer, or the water temps have dropped very low in the winter and they suspend over the river channel, sloughs and bottoms that are deep and they tend to suspend around 30 to 40 feet over deeper water.


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## Gofish2day (May 9, 2006)

Loy, you surprise me all the time. I like the explanations and I need to try the sep battery cable. I don't think my Lowrance is as clear as my Hum Bird. The Hum bird was clear but a cheaper unit. Many of those units gave a false clarity. I am positive my Lowrance is set right but I think could be clearer.


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## GaryI (Mar 18, 2015)

SS,

Thanks again for your response, especially your ideas on the ambush points.

Do you have any thoughts to share on why I can't ever catch them in muddy water, for days at a time? I can understand a slow bite for several days of muddy conditions (because of the low visibility), but eventually the fish have to eat, don't they? They must be finding a way to locate and catch shad during these conditions. I can't imagine them going hungry for weeks at a time. But, even if I try to fish hard with lures that are dependent on vibration to catch fish, I rarely get a bite in muddy conditions. In fact, I have a hard time even finding any schools of white bass during muddy conditions. 

Gary


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

White bass are a challenge indeed to catch in muddy water.
I have no idea of how they find their food, other than smell and water disturbance. Visual is their main feeding modality, but I have often proved to people that during the spawn at least the white bass are their, you just can't hardly catch them.
For example a few years ago my son and I were up at a shoal on a creek during the white bass spawn. It was the right time of year, right amount of water flowing and a spot where white bass gang up to actually spawn.
In fact you could see some occasionally do the shimmy up the shoal spraying their eggs/milt.
Several people were fishing there, a couple of guys had been their for hours and a few white bass strung up.
I watched them and they were throwing about a hundred times to get one bite.
WQe cast for a while and caught a couple when Lee asked, "Do you think there are many in here?"
I said watch this and threw the cast net up close to the shoal and was barely able to pull it in because there were at least twenty big sows in the net, a good five of them feel out as I lifted it into the boat and there were still a big bunch in the net.
I released them over the side.
Several people were watching, I'm sure some thought I was gonna keep them, but it was just to show Lee how many white bass could be in a spot and still not be biting lures when the water is muddy.
Over the years I have one sure fire way to catch them during the spawn in muddy water, and that is a peeled craw fish on an Aberdeen hook and a split shot above it, or as light a weight as possible.
Cast cross ways to the current and let it drift until it settles and wham! A white bass will hit it.
This is really only effective in small creeks and pools when white bass are spawning.
White bass will seek out the clearest water they can find when the creeks muddy during the spawn, just a little bit clearer water can pay off big.
A jig with curly tail(chat or white) barely dragged across the bottom, painfully slow will work if you can find a stack of them in a pool just a little clearer then the water around it. Sometimes just let it sit on the bottom for a while and one will smash it.
The white bass spawn coincides with the emergence of the craw fish hatch, which they find by rooting along the bottom or waiting at an ambush spot where a creek dumps into a pool or the river, or a backwater drains into a creek.
The craw fish get flushed out of the backwaters when the late winter early spring rises come.

The other method to use when in the lake outside of the spawn is to troll know ambush spots with a hard vibrating lure like a trap. One of the few times I will troll.
Often it will excite a school into hitting cast baits after a few passes.


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## Whitebassfisher (May 4, 2007)

This is a really good thread!!
I can't add anything because I am not good with the electronics. But I think the whites still have to eat some in muddy water, and find the prey by smell. Crawfish are particularly popular in the Sabine above Toledo Bend. I don't like to use bait, but have in muddy water. I have had to resort to minnows or shad fished on bottom with a fish finder type rig.


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## GaryI (Mar 18, 2015)

SS,

Thanks very much again. Very interesting. I will try your crawfish (in the spring) and trap ideas. I love your cast net example of how many white bass could be in a spot and still not be biting lures when the water is muddy. 

Unfortunately, I am sure I will have many opportunities in the coming years to try various ideas to catch white bass in muddy water, especially in the next few months. I will let you know if I have any luck.

Gary


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## BobBobber (Aug 29, 2015)

shadslinger said:


> Over the years I have one sure fire way to catch them during the spawn in muddy water, and that is a peeled craw fish on an Aberdeen hook and a split shot above it, or as light a weight as possible.


 In the Midwest, crawfish, especially soft craws and peelers, are prime baits for catfish and bass. In Texas, none of the bait shops sell them.

Also, same with crickets. Great for bream but not sold in bait shops in Texas. Petsmart has better prices on them than Petco however. But you need to get 150 pc or more for best price discount.

*So . . . back to the crawfish . . . How can you get them to use for bait?*

In the Midwest, we used carbide lanterns and picked soft craws one at a time by hand. But there are no poisonous water snakes there. I wouldn't want to wade rivers and streams in Texas after dark.

And in the Spring, when white bass run, the water is too cold for crawfish to shed shells.


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## Bluiis (Aug 20, 2005)

*Crayfish*

If Crayfish are to be had, Fiesta Markets are usually a good place to find them. They may even have frozen tail meat in a freezer.

On a similar note, C J's makes a crayfish punch catfish bait. Just was wondering if WB would pick up a hook with that punch bait on it? Maybe embedded in a small piece of sponge. Anyone tried it for WB?


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

I get mine by using a bull rake and dredging them out of road side ditches I can tell have some in it.
A minnow seine for small ox bow lakes or shallow sloughes.
Or the fish market.


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