I'd like to reach back in time, grab up my great grandfather and throw him into one of todays modernized high tech fishing boats.
"Yah gramps, use that graphite 100 SHIMANO rod. The one with the CITICA baitcaster on it. But before you do that why don't you take a depth reading off my Ray Jefferson LCD or my Eagle flasher. Check the weedgrowth with it too. Before you start at all, pick up that probe and take a water temperature reading and double check our spot with that two phase oxygen meter. To be on the safe side there ol' timer, you had better check the PH level and water clarity with that sechi disc and then if you're not sure what colour of lure to use drop the probe of the Colour C Lector meter overboard. Did you know the barometric pressure was rising and we don't stand a chance of even catching a fish today anyway?,".
About this time gramps would be ready to "re-do" his breakfast and would likely settle for a game of checkers back home! I'm not even going to say a word about what's inside the tackle box here.
It's a little bit scary and even down right intimidating when one begins to think about some of todays fishing electronics and whether or not they are a real asset and fish catcher.
I guarantee you that nothing you can purchase, short of a gill net, will catch fish for you. That part will always be up to you! Fear them or not, some of the above mentioned items will help you locate and eventually catch more fish. Its a point of knowing what the thing is going to do for you, spending time with the somewhat sophisticated equipment and learning how to use it.
When I was 15 I bought my first item of electronic apparatus. it seemed a sure thing that this here new "fish finder" would make my job so much more easier. After installing it on my 14 foot aluminum, I couldn't make heads or tails out of what this black box was trying to do for me. After two months of frustration and seemingly money gone wasted I resorted to reading the directions still sitting in the original box. (Those of you who know me will understand this).
It was actually a depth sounder/fish finder combo. The round face of the box emits light flashes and those flashes correspond with a numerical scale which gives your bottom reading. Simple. If fish or weeds or rocks or logs happen to be beneath me, they will show up as little light flashes as well. Purely simple.
Some manufactures of higher tech equipment like to think that these "flashers" are obsolete but even today there is one mounted on the front of my 371 Ranger Bass Boat. I'm comfortable with it. I grew up with it!
All depth sounding/fish finding devises work on the same principle as that first one I owned. They use a transducer (transmitter/receiver) to send a signal in a fixed direction. As the signal returns it is calculated internally and displayed upon a screen. Something similar to radar. The major differences between a "flasher", an "LCD" (Liquid Crystal Display) and a "graph" is all in how that signal is displayed to you. A flasher uses lights as I mentioned above and is comparable in price to the cheapest LCD's. An LCD gives you a horizontal picture, like a TV. Bottom shows up as a straight line and any structure or fish in-between comes to you as vertical lines or inverted checkmarks.
LCD's can range in price to $1000 which takes you into the price range of a cheaper graph. A graph recorder gives you basically the same picture as an LCD except the resolution is much higher and clearer. A graph uses special display paper which is permanently marked by styluses (or is it styli). Whatever the case you end up with a permanent record of the bottom structure you have been fishing. The paper is an on-going added cost which has to be replaced.
Before coughing up the bucks for one of these items determine what exactly you wish to do with it and be leery of purchasing a piece of equipment which is on the low end of the price scale of another type unit below it. In other words I would likely opt for a higher priced flasher than a low priced LCD. You get what you pay for.
Fish finding capability may be a bit misleading. Not that any unit is not capable of displaying a signal that is something other than the bottom but the interpretation may leave something to be desired. Is that a fish or is that a weed? Some LCD units bring up little fish shapes to help you tell the difference - for a cost of course.
Flashers will identify suspended items but only momentarily. Its a flash and its gone and if you don't keep your eyes peeled to the screen you will miss it. LCD's give you a better opportunity not to miss that little blob of black that may be a fish by displaying it in TV type format which constantly scans from left to right. You have a few seconds before the object leaves the screen.
High priced graph recorders give an excellent display of fish should you be over top of some which leads me into saying that your units fish-finding capabilities are only as good as the type of transducer you have purchased with the unit.
Think of the transducer as a flashlight. The farther or deeper it reaches, the more area it covers. If you are fishing in 15 feet of water your transducer may only be cover a 20 foot diameter circle of bottom. You may specifically ask for a wide cone transducer which will show you a little more of the bottom but then you will lose some of your deep water (100 feet or more) resolution. Its a trade off that only you can determine what will suit your personal needs.
For most of my fishing tactics, I don't rely on fish-finding capabilities with any of my units. Tell me how deep the water is, whether or not I am sitting on the edge of a weedbed or sandbar and I'll tell you within half an hour if there is any fish down there or not.
