Fishing

The big screen advantage

“Multifunction display” grows in meaning with each new generation of marine electronics. Sonar functions now include traditional down-looking 2-D scanning with and without CHIRP, high-definition side and down scanning, live forward scanning, 360-degree circular scanning and a choice of frequencies to optimize each type for either maximum detail or greatest scanning depth/distance. […]

Fishing

Seat of your pants sonar

Sonar fishfinders have always helped us find fish and fish-holding structure, but helping us precisely target fish has been another story. Early on,bulb-type flashers supported vertical jigging. You dropped your lure and watched its flash move down to a flash marking a fish and then, hopefully, all you had to do was set the hook. The problem was that not all the nearby fish were directly under our boats — not even all the fish we saw on our screens. Some were at the outside edge of the cone of sound generated by our transducers and we couldn’t tell if they were to our left or right or off our bow or transom.

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Fishing

Marine electronics for your wrist

An electronic watch can be as smart as Einstein and still be useless to fishermen if it isn’t waterproof.

Well, Garmin’s Quatix 3 ($449.99) can be submerged to 100 meters — about 178 feet deeper than the practical limit for SCUBA divers on compressed air — so this watch should handle anything a fisherman is likely to encounter. […]