[Sounder And Transducer Set Up For Gamefishing]

Thanks Dave i meant to say 585 to! getting my 625 and 585 mixed up. i haven't been to deep with it yet waiting for the the wind to drop out

Good luck

OJ

Hi OJ,

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad your happy with the new transducer/sounder set up. In the end I bought a FCV585 and TM260 transducer. Couldn't be happier, getting great bottom readings at speed and sounding out schools of fish at 500m is not a drama. All in all a great combination. Best of luck up north.........

Dave

[Sounder And Transducer Set Up For Gamefishing]

Hi Dave, thought i would give you my info on the TM270W, i have a 6m (Aluminium) Cairns Custom Craft,150 e-tec, Cuddy Cabin. My sounder is a Furono FCV585 with a 600W transducer and now have recently bought the TM270W transom mount Transducer, i loved the 600w Transducer but was struggling with the deeper waters of the shelf it would read well upto about 90m but but deeper than that and it lost it's clarity. so after 4 yrs of using a 600w I took the plunge and bought the 270,

I got it sent over from the USA from Blue Herron marine who were good to deal with and after doing the usual customs declaration stuff received it after about 4 wks of ordering (held up in customs for 3).

I took it out of the box and was blown away how big it was and thought i need a bigger boat ! or at least a bigger transom bracket so of i went to see Marcau at Cairns Custom and within an hour had a transom mount 4 x bigger than the original one just to be on the safe side.

After installing it as you do with by the instructions and changing the settings to accept the 1kw transducer we waited for the wind to drop and we went out for a fish it was blowing 10-15 knots so no fishing of the shelf but went into the 53m marks i have and to be honest at first couldn't see

much difference and was a bit disappointed, at around 25 knts we were losing the bottom, i had fish id on and no fish appeared like with my 600w. we caught plenty of fish but that was more down to the good fishing spots and not the 270 and was considering putting the 600w along side the 270 and plug in and out when needed.

Then my fishing mate (lucky) had a friend up from Sydney who was a wizz a electronics stuff especially Transducers he came round to the shed and immediately dropped it by 25mm well below the hull line and set the unit to factory defaults and that day went out again, we decided to go out of Deeral an hour south of Cairns and to new fishing grounds where i had no marks at all.

It was a gentle breeze of 5 knts so we headed out towards the shelf, immediately coming out of the estuary i opened her up WOT 37 knts and was blown away that the Transducer was reading clear as day, ok it was flat calm almost glassing out but it definitely got my mouth watering, after getting to around 70m started to do some prospecting and this is where the wide beam came into play found a 3m drop off (quite easily) dropped the anchor and spent the next few hours pulling up a good mixed bag of Red Emp, Rosy Jobs, Maori sea brim, large hussers, flowery cod etc the fish id wasn't working

but the arches were and I started to reeducate myself on reading a sounder, we upped the anchor and went hunting for Coral trout, found a reef around 35m and the arches of fish and bait appeared before my eyes, positioned the boat on a bit of a drop off of about 45m and pulled in 9 trout within an hour and other stuff like a big Spanish Mack with a floater out back.

I have been out again since and when my anchor winch stuffed up we did some trolling around and found some excellent looking marks which i will return to another day, i now fully recommend the TM270W and if your sounder is as good as a Furono FCV585 sell your kids and go out and get one!

Go get em.

OJ

Hi folks,

I'm looking for a bit of advice regarding a new sounder/transducer set up for my boat. I have a 560C barcrusher, which I use for game fishing as well as inshore reef fishing for snapper, kings and the like. I currently have a Raymarine DS500X sounder which is great but becomes less reliable once you get out to 100 fathoms and more.

I have an independent GPS which I'm happy with so I'm looking at a Lowrance HDS-5X sounder but upgrading to a 1kw transducer. In particular the airmar TM270W or the TM260, but I have a couple of concerns.

Both transducers are around 4kg and 26cm long. Is this too big to hang off the back of a 6m tinnie??

Both are 50/200kHz but run different beam angles. The TM270W has a 25deg beam width at both 50 & 200kHz, which would be great for bait/game fish but how will it go with bottom definition inshore and out at the shelf? The TM260 runs 19 and 6 deg angles, which is more of a compromise but not as suitable for the game fish. There is a fair price difference between the two as well.

Just wondering what your thoughts were before I shelled out the cash. Thanks........

Dave