Thread: Budget Depth Finder

I used a little Humminbird Pirhanamax series for a lot of years. Small Simple, easy to use and read. and plenty good for depth and finding structure. I see they have em for $70 at Bass Pro. Plenty cheap and sounds like it would be a lot better than what you've grown accustomed to. They have a separate transducer you can buy just for trolling motors. hockey puck shaped that is lot less susceptible to breakage in the stumps. I found one for $30 on ebay. Hope this helps

Never used the Piranha, but I have used several different Hummingbird units and all of them have been very good units. I have two Lowrance units on my boat. The one in the dash is mounted on transom an is an X-4 Pro. The one I have mounted up front on my trolling motor is a X-Mark 5. It even has GPS so you can mark structure. The X-4 Pro runs about $150.00. The X-Mark 5 runs around $200.00. Good luck trying to decide. By the way, Walmart carries a couple of different Lowrance units under $200.00. Either one, Hummingbird or Lowrance, will be good for what you want to do with it, in my humble opinion.

If you did good with that one I would just stay with the cheapest one you can find. To keep the screen from blackening, try to keep it out of direct sunlight and that should help. I think I payed $79 for the hummingbird I have and it serves the purpose.

If you look around you can find a lowrance elite 4X DSI for just a little over 200.00
or you can get the Elite 4X for around 160.00

I have freinds that have both and they are very happy with them.............But I have never used one.

What features would y'all consider most important on this budget? What is the difference in a 4x DSI and Elite 4x

DSI stands for Didigital - Side Imaging --- They usualy run about a thousand bucks or more -- and are not as simple to learn

Originally Posted by Fish on Line

DSI stands for Didigital - Side Imaging --- They usualy run about a thousand bucks or more -- and are not as simple to learn

That's very inaccurate, DSI stands for Down Scan Imaging and in the 4 series its just over 200 bucks or so.
SI alone means Side Image.

Humminbird is coming out with a new Helix model early this winter, 2D sonar and GPS will be under 300 bucks. I am waiting to see them before I decide on a bow unit.

When you buy, Get a unit that is Color. When the fish are deep in the Channel The fish stand out from the bait and are easy to see. My Brother has an older Gray line type unit and it misses half the fish when the shad are thick like they are now in The Bonne Even the Cheep units have GPS.... Like said Before try E-BAY