Side & Down imaging sonar Watts Bar

[Daniel Tn]

Do any of you guys with a side & down imaging sonar fish Watts Bar on a regular basis? We can't afford one of the units but would like to get with someone that has one of them and spend a half day or so out on the lake to help locate some deep brush piles and other cover. Will gladly pay you for your time and gas...we just want to write down the coordinates of the brush piles/other interesting cover, so that we can input it into our GPS and be able to maybe find them again. If anybody would be willing to go out, please PM me or let me know and we'll set something up. Interested mostly in the Rowden Branch area...that's where we crappie fish mostly.

As a background story to this...last year we stumbled upon 3 brush piles in deeper water that we caught fish on all last yr and into this year so far. They are in the wide open and it was just luck that we stumbled onto them in the first place. What we were thinking is that there has to be more of them that nobody really knows about...and to find them with our sonar would mean that we would have to go directly over top of them in order to find them. The side imaging sonar would make easy work of it, if it does like they say it does. We know a lot of guys that fish...but nobody has one of the side imaging/down imaging units. I know several of you guys here have them though...figured it was worth a shot to ask.

 

[vhype]

Normally I'm in Kingston Wed through Saturday since I split time to help my mom. What part of the lake do you normally fish? There a lot of barn foundations, road cuts, bridges etc around Thief Neck that fun to fish too so brush is not the only targets. Brush only stays around for a year or less.

 

[Daniel Tn]

I don't really fish anymore...use to be a major CFF contributor with fishing reports and such. Use to go all the time back when I had my boat...then seems like I've just lost interest in it the last few yrs. My dad still fishes pretty heavily though and I go from time to time with him, since that's about the only hobby he does anymore that we can do together. I was just primarily trying to find him some more spots to hit while he was crappie fishing.

He always crappie fishes the lower end of the lake...what they call the Hog Pen aka Rowden Branch area...right by Hornsby. He don't ever go up toward Thiefneck. The most he does up that way is striper fishing and he puts in way above Thiefneck....he puts in at Polecat boat ramp and fishes the river part of the lake.

Been looking at these sonar units. What do you guys think of a Humminbird 598 model with the side imaging? I saw where you can get those for around $719...that's a lot better priced than the $2k units. I realize the screen is only 5 inches but would it be a good unit for finding some brush piles and being able to interpret what it's showing?

 

[vhype]

Last year's models with the bigger screens can be had for $1300 right now if you look around.

 

[bntpolpatrn]

There is a guy on bass boat central that is selling the 998 for $1295

 

[Daniel Tn]

The big question for me is....what can the larger screen units do that the smaller ones can't? Is it more of a personal preference thing? Obviously the screen size would allow you to see more on it at once...but is it enough to justify nearly double the price of the 5" screen units? If a person fished all the time, I could see them having a need for the bigger units. But say you fish less than 50 trips a year...would it be worth the while to go for the bigger screened ones or what? You're talking to a guy that the last sonar unit I bought was an Eagle Fishmark 480 lol. So all this side imaging and down imaging stuff is new to me. I've only seen it in pics posted here, and on some of the TV shows.

If I got one for dad's boat...am I gonna have to have an engineering degree to be able to install it? I'm guessing this ain't a simple job of just putting the transducer on the boat and hooking the wires up to the back of the unit. I'm betting they have to be in a sweet spot on the boat in order to work correctly.

 

[Doug V]

The larger the screen the easier to see small details but you can also reduce coverage area and increase the size on the smaller units or view one side only. If your looking for large piles or foundations a smaller unit may be able to be enough to do what you want. Humminbird also makes the 398ci SI Combo that has side imaging and MSRP for $499.00 http://store.humminbird.com/products/666527/398ci_SI_Combo