Thread: Where To Mount Fisher Finder Screen with DI

What boat do you own?

It a fisher marsh hawk 170

The speed at which the boat is moving is not as important as the boat moving period ...

Because imaging (DI/SI) is rendered from echo data received in a "thin slice" sonar beam ...the boat needs to be moving in order to ping a different "slice" of water each ping ...

Imaging will work stationary ...but the targets will be pinged repeatedly and painted as smears in the displayed image ...

Rickie

Ricky is right. Especially for DI, the speed can be very low but to get the pretty pics, the boat has to be moving some. The speed might have to be a little higher for SI. I get good pics at .3 mph, just match chart speed to boat speed

Thanks guys. The other thing I was thinking is that it would be easier to find and mark spots going 3-6 mph if it was mounted near the drivers seat. I just liked the idea of having it on the bow but may be a bad idea.

Got my DI unit mounted on the bow, transducer on TM .... no complaints so far. Get good images at <1mph :







You just have to be aware of the fact that your "ping" goes out in a thin, fan shaped, side to side direction ... so any turning of the TM can skew your image momentarily, plus it's reading a different angle unless pointing straight forward.

Here's an example of what happens when you have to make a quick turn, to avoid an oncoming tree top :



Notice how I passed over the first Cedar and got a good image, then had to swerve to miss running the TM into the next one (which was much taller & trunk was broken off just below the waterline)

These images are from my Lowrance Elite 5 DSI/Chartplotter (now discontinued), so I'd expect newer DI units to give even better performance.

... cp

Thanks! Those are some really nice pictures.

It isn't too expensive to have two locations for one head unit. That's what I did with my first DI. I put a transom 'ducer in back and mounted the unit at the console so I would be able to see the GPS/Nav screens. Then I bought a TM 'ducer and all the stuff to just move the head to the bow whenever I stopped to fish and wanted to use DI/2D. If you go with Humminbird, all you have to do is call them and tell them you want to buy a "second station" and they will send you all the parts you need.