I'm not asking for opinions on whether or not to take a depth finder. I'll never go on my week long fishing trip of the summer without one.

With that said, this Humminbird Ice Helix 7 has piqued my curiosity.

I've always been a Vexilar guy, they're easy to use and work great. However, 2 years ago while fishing with a guide on Devils Lake I was able to use the LCD graph he had is his truck. After a quick learning curve on reading the screen the LCD was unique in the way that you could track your jigging cadence for a few seconds before it scrolled off of the screen. What really intrigues me is the Humminbird gives you the options of full or split screen options of LCD, GPS lake map, or traditional flasher.

So on one of my daily daydreams of the BW I got to wondering how great this unit could be in the back country. I'm thinking the GPS function combined with the lake master map would be an awesome feature. The ability to just set the transducer on wet floor of the canoe is about as simple as it gets.

Here's where I could use some imput. When used for ice fishing would I be fishing by myself because all my buddies running Vexilars kicked me out of the group for destroying their signals? I know color screens and back lights kill batteries which makes me think this might be a deal breaker, I have a feeling this unit could chew through batteries in a hurry. Any thoughts, ideas, opinions?

I love the GPS units and color screens. I'm not an expert like others on here, but with an 800 mA draw, I think you'd be lucky to get 4 hours out of a set of 10 AA batteries. You'd have to look into one of the battery packs as discussed in other posts. Those packs usually run in the $250 + range. Too rich for my limited use.

RW

I agree. There is no way AA batteries would work in this situation. I don't even run AA's on my Lowrance X-4. I'm sure it's way overkill but I bring along a 12 volt, 7 AH battery. I know full and we'll there are lighter options but the trade off might be worth it.

Cool unit, but the target separation sucks... 2.5 inches compared to .25 inch on my FLX-28. That'd be tough for light crappie or whitefish bites...

RM

I don't know why the Vex buddies would kick you out, aren't the Hummingbirds at a different frequency? When my brother used his Hummingbird I didn't have a problem with my Marcum.

I have been thinking along the same lines as you. When my portable graph finally breaks I want something along this line. Something I can use for ice fishing or vertical jigging as well as a graph for trolling. Would get more use out of it I think. Plus I have 2 flashers and 2 sons...guess who doesn't get a flasher when we we all 3 go ice fishing:)

T

My friend has a humminbird unit with the ice transducer for ice fishing. When I use my vexilar next to him he gets a lot of interference. He can usually still read it but it's not the best.

DJ

Snooping in the manual for the Ice Helix 7 it states it will run up to 16 hours on the supplied battery. Don’t know if that was the one with GPS or not. Don’t know the size of the battery they supply but I would guess it is a Led Acid 7 – 10 Ah which puts it in the 4 – 5 pounds class.