fishfinder/gps

[Dean Machine]

I'm looking for advice on a fishfinder/gps for an intermediate level yaker such as myself. I've never owned a GPS and wanted to upgrade my eagle 240 fishfinder to something a little more advanced. Not sure what to do since my only experience with sonar has been the eagle fish easy 240. What about sonar/gps in one unit? Color vs. grayscale? What depth is adequate for coastal ca. ? Thanks ahead of time. I will be watching my post.

[cabojohn]

I have the GPS hooked up to my Matrix ff on my kayak. Its nice to have everything "All In One" but honestly the hand held GPS is more
convenient. With the hand help GPS your not limited.

$.02

cabojohn

[Dean Machine]

I was looking at the humminbird matrix fishfinders after reading your post. I really like the idea of being able to have a hand held gps that works with a fishfinder because I will also use it off the water. Which handheld units will work with a fishfinder? How does that work exactly? Is the handheld gps plugged into the fishfinder to act as a gps antennae? What type of plug is it? From reading the humminbird site it seemed like the only fishfinders that were not combination gps/ fishfinders and were gps compatible were the 700 series although I am most likely wrong.

[dgax65]

I think that most of the Garmin 76 line have a NEMA output cable included. That allows you to output to a chartplotter or radio. Humminbird is pushing their own GPS receivers and they don't have much on their website about using non-Humminbird GPS. You could probably splice the NEMA cable from the GPS to a Humminbird GPS input cable. Might not be worth the effort, though. Other brands might be a little more user friendly.
I like having a backup, so I take a handheld Garmin GPS 76 in addition to the hardwired GPS receiver for the Humminbird Matrix 77c. Next thing I need to try is cutting and pasting Lat/Longs from my Humminbird software into my Garmin.

[nmbrinkman]

I've never used a color fish finder so I can't speak from experience as to their benefits BUT I do know that some require the backlight to be on in order to see the color, which is a serious drain on the battery...

[madscientist]

I love my lowrance color sonar/gps and would never go back to monochrome or handhelds. Expensive, but worth every penny IMHO.

[nmbrinkman]

man law it is (all together)..."MAN LAW" :lol: