Help with sonar unit for btb

[Longliner]

Hey folks, could use a bit of help with a decent sonar unit. Something with charts that show topography and GPS maybey something user friendly around $300.

[shoffer]

I picked up a Lowrance Hook2 5 for below that price before Xmas and it has all of those plus downscan imaging too (called the Splitshot Transducer). Tested it out yesterday and it was really good.

[shoffer]

Here is the link for it.

https://express.google.com/u/0/product/ ... gLiAvD_BwE

[Kirk B.]

Hook2 5x doesn't have maps, just trails (your tracks).
This is true for all of the "-x" units from Lowrance. You can set waypoints and navpoints, but it's all plotted on a white screen.


Kirk B.

[Longliner]

I need it to show elevation contours like a topographical map with split screen

[Longliner]

Hummingbird, lowrance or dragonfly

[shoffer]

Hook2 5x doesn't have maps, just trails (your tracks).
This is true for all of the "-x" units from Lowrance. You can set waypoints and navpoints, but it's all plotted on a white screen.

Thanks for the correction. Since mine has a map, I checked the box and this is what I purchased:

It game with a chip and I downloaded the area I fish from the Navionics Website for free and put it into the unit, and I have maps.

If you buy it from hte GPS Store with Google Shopping (as I did), you can get 20% off, so that's a good deal:

[Longliner]

Looks good thank you sir

[Longliner]

With the 20% off it was $249 through Google so I got it, thx bro

[shoffer]

You will like it. I decided to mount my transducer outside the kayak; I had ACK mount it inside the hull and it kept messing up, so I just rewired it myself, like I should have done in the first place.

[Longliner]

Can you show some pics bro of how you mounted the transducer outside? I was gonna have ack do the set -up but if you had issues with them maybe I'll pass. What issues were you having?

[shoffer]

ACK did an inside the hull mount for my old Humminbird and it was fine. And I wanted an inside the hull mount for this Lowrance also, so I took it to the Houston Bissonnet store. This time, though, when they mounted the transducer inside the hull, they put too much goop between the transducer and the hull, so the stuff on the screen was not reading. It would continually change depth readings, and say I was in 174 feet of water when I knew I was in 5 feet. The downscan did not look like it was supposed to and that was the main reason I got it.

So I pulled the transducer out, cleaned off the goop completely, and used a Scotty transducer mount that sets up on a gear track for 25 bucks on Amazon. You can shorten it or lengthen it to go into the water, and it is fully adjustable. I ran the wires into the hull to the power source. You can lift the transducer out of the water when you need to. I like it, but the only issue is that makes a little noise when you are moving through the water, but that should not be an issue for BTB use.

Transducer down:

Transducer up:

[Longliner]

Nice, gr8 pics , like the idea and thx for sharing bro.

[kickingback]

Looks good Shoffer! Nice fix!