portable fish finders

[loophole]

I'm thinking about buying a portable unit to take to some of those lakes the MNR stocks with trout. I've had no luck fishing for brookies the past couple of years and I thought I'd improve my odds. There are a number of units on EBay including makes I've never heard of such as 100M, HawkEye and Lucky, a wireless product from Hong Kong. I 'm a little leery about stuff from Asia on eBay. Is anyone familiar with any of these products? Can someone recommend an easy to use portable? Thanks

[Ragehunter]

Radioworld in Toronto has some nice options.
The Marcum ShowDown Troller Sonar 2.0 and Sonar 2.0 Combo are both nice units and come with good review.
The Lowrance Elite-4x HDI ICE is also a well priced unit and works wonderfully.
Hope this helps....
Cheers!

[RyanW]

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[Netman]

This is the easiest most portable unit that I've ever seen. There's a lot of great finders out there. Good luck

[scarkner]

I have had two of those cheap e-bay fish finders that basically just show a little fish-icon on the screen to tell you the approximate depth. They really were useless. Not nearly enough adjustments. It was nice that they were so small, but they literally did nothing to help with fishing. If you are really budget constrained then you would be better buying an old used brand-name, or even a flasher (you can use flashers in the summer!).

I don't know much about the ones that go bluetooth to your phone. Some of them look quite good. Since they are cutting out the cost of the display you can get a pretty good price on them. But I would worry about wrecking my phone with wet hands, etc.

I just bought a Helix-5 Sonar. It's a pretty cheap unit and has the advantage of being a flasher for ice, and regular fish finder too. Not advertizing it here, just telling you that I am pretty happy with it. You can get a portable version with battery and bag.

Just my 2-cents.

[Dnbmike]

I use an older 570 humminbird and was blown away by how sensitive they are .. It came with the optional ice pack .. Traded a 60$ rod for the hole thing ... I would suggest building yourself an arm to hold your transducer pretty easy . YouTube has a tutorial if you need help . Better then the floats in my opinion . You can find these units for around a 100$ used if you keep your eyes open ... Im sure you can really go high tech , down image and structure scan but for me it's good enough ... Atleast you have something to look at when they are not bitting

[Supernova224]

Does anyone have any experience with the Garmin Echo 151? Looking for something in my kayak this summer, hopefully on the budget-friendly side...