My fishing experience is pretty much confined to my yearly trip to the BWCA.

A fish finder has been brought in the past by various tripping partners, but has not made a return trip because of how cumbersome they seem to be.

This past trip though, my SIL brought something similar to this.

From my perspective (practically zero experience), it worked okay. I am interested in how experienced anglers regard this innovation.

Just my opinion, this is NOT a fish finder it is a very expensive depth finder, lots of info here on depth finders that are probably better and less expensive.

Vexilar makes one that's only about $100. Sonar T-Pod, hooks up via bluetooth to your phone so you don't need service. Really good for depth, but doesn't accurately mark fish in my experience. You can hook it up to a swivel and cast it out from shore, which really helps with fishing from shore.

If you want an effective fish finder that is inexpensive and portable, the Garmin Striker 4 is a good option. General rule of thumb, anything without a separate transducer probably isn't going to do a good job of marking fish. For most applications, all you need is depth (more importantly, sudden changes in depth) to find the fish.

See, I am learning stuff already. Like I said, my fishing experience is pretty limited. I always thought that a depth finder and a fish finder were just different terms for the same thing. Kind of like a fishing rod or a fishing pole. Thanks for the clarification.

This item is indeed a fish finder and depth finder. You can cast it or use when trolling. The battery life can last up to 6 hours before you need to recharge and works with an app on your phone. There are several different modes that can give you great detail of what’s underneath you. While it’s light and very portable, you have to consider how you will recharge the device and your phone each day.

Both Garmin stuff and Deeper are decent options. I have a Deeper and brought it last year. Consider how you will attach it to your boat (don't just let it bang against the side), and what precautions you might take to avoid dropping your phone in the water. I bring an external battery for charging my phone anyway but you should compare the gear you need for one device vs another. As egknuti said it is both a depth and fish finder. It uses a wifi signal to connect to your phone. Personally I enjoy the versatility of being able to cast from shore to map out what things look like when fishing from camp.

I own one and it marks fish just fine. However I rarely cast it. If you "troll" it behind the boat you have to go really slow. The best option I've found is to use a small car antenna with wire so that it hangs off the side of the boat.







All that said, considering you have to recharge two devices, itself as well as for your phone, it requires a lot of power relative to other options. The only real advantage is color vs BW and it packs down smaller and lighter. If those are really important to you then I'd recommend it, otherwise I'd go with some of the other options people have posted with AAA battery packs.

Not gunna lie, I got one as a gift a year or two ago and I returned it without trying it. I know you arent supposed to judge a book by it's cover but this seemed like a gimmick to me.

CityFisher74: "Not gunna lie, I got one as a gift a year or two ago and I returned it without trying it. I know you arent supposed to judge a book by it's cover but this seemed like a gimmick to me."

Yep, the next item available on a touch of modern web site.