Sea Ranger

What are you targeting? Bait or Lure? What line/braid? Bear

Jon you and your daughters put most of us to shame mate. Great catch there.

agreed I looked at the Surtees and Barcrusher models under 5m with cuddy cabins. The cabin was nice but boy did it take away from usable floor space. If you bait fish out the back 2 people tops in my mind would work. Casting would be difficult unless you just flick. Bear

Catch and release or catch and release with a bigger hook in his snout lol

I like the last one

I was recently in this situation. I went with the Stacer Sea Ranger 499. If you are near me you are more than welcome to look at my boat. It is made in their plate boat factory or area and has 4mm sides and bottoms. The floor is welded 3mm checker plate. I have not had her offshore yet nor in any real seas. The worst was in Pittwater this last Sunday with a bit of chop and it handled just fine. My last boat was a Haines Hunter 520sf and I would say I'm very pleased with the new boat. Bear

Wow, glad everyone is ok. I hope no Raiders lost their boat today. Burning Boat Sent from my iPad

We put out from Brooklyn as well on Sunday. We went upstream a ways and put our traps in. We got 5 nice crabs in 3 hours. Bear

A long but interesting read. It does make a lot of assumptions that should be taken at just that.

Lol Ryder. I’m sitting here reviewing where we went on Sunday and planning next weeks fishing buy looking through my two favourite books. My cover is nicer btw.

I bet you didn’t get as wet as we did in my center console today.

Well if they are paddler they can be poisonous so be careful. They look like the Coral Crab to me http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/Documents/biosecurity/asian_paddle_crab.pdf Bear

Croc

Well if you let me know where I promise not to tell a soul

I originally wanted the HDS Live 7 or 9 before getting the Garmin (Packaged with my boat) Do you know if the Navionics shares actual soundings of the surrounding structure or just marks? Bear

For anyone interested in purchasing a new Garmin at the moment till the end of Jan 2019 Garmin is giving away a free Bluechart G2 Vision HD set of maps worth about $400 AUD. https://www.garmin.com/au/company/Promotions/ Bear

Yes I bought new. I went with a Stacer Sea Ranger 499. I went with 4mm sides and bottom. 3mm checker plate welded floor 90hp Yamaha Overall had more room inside than the Stabi or the 495 WL Barcrusher. I think the build quality on the Stabi and BC are better but not much room on board.

Well that is good to hear. I’d hate to think I had the same detail when I only paid once years ago lol.

And some more

Ok here is a bit more

I could access sonar charts on my older version. Here is the same location from my phone (same on my old tablet not charged)

I’ll check it out and let you know. I’ve had the app for several years and I haven’t subscribed. I had to accept the new terms to turn it on though

I do not claim to be an expert on these by any means. Another thread on here about a cost rise in Navionics prompted me to start this thread. I recently purchased a new boat. My intention at the time was to get a Lowrance HDs live sounder. My boat came with a Garmin 75sv echomap. I did have some conversation with the dealer who advised me that Garmin had just purchased Navionics so if I was familiar with that software it was likely that soon it would be compatible with my unit or at least similar features. Now I must clarify my previous sounder was a Lowrance x25 and I used Navionics on my Android tablet. My Navionics was not the HD version. I also did not have the subscription. Coming from the x25 just about any new sounder would look good. I’m more than happy with the down/side scan and normal sonar. I had read that the maps on Garmin were not as good as Navionics so I took my tablet and compared on my first outing. To me they were labeled slightly different but contour wise and coastal feature wise they all but looked the same. I haven’t carried the tablet since. I have read that in some areas one or the other has better detail. One thing I really think has potential with the Garmin is QuickDraw. QuickDraw allows me to share my soundings to 1 foot contours with others and in the process saves those readings to my base map. I like the idea of cloud sharing mapping details amongst other skippers. https://buy.garmin.com/en-AU/AU/p/543340 I think that link brings up the QuickDraw details. At anyrate I started this thread so we can, in a civil way discuss different sounders/plotters. what plotter/sounder do you have? Bear

I’m using the built in maps on my Garmin. My Navionics does not have an active subscription. I haven’t used it (Navionics)for a few months since getting my new chart plotter. I had heard the same about details so initially took my tablet along to compare and I could not see any different details in Port Hacking between the two. QuickDraw on the Garmin uses one foot contours. I don’t want to derail this thread so I’ll start another on my plotter.

Garmin may be the reason the price is going up for Navionics but I got to say I'm liking Garmin at the moment. I believe some of the cost is the additional data Navionics will get from Garmin. or at least that's what a salesman told me lol I have a Garmin 75SV. Garmin's charts of Port Hacking look pretty good when compared to my Navionics on my tablet. Garmin has a free (as of now anyway) way to share actual soundings to others to keep the maps very up to date. So if I use my sounder over a particular area in the bay I can upload the bottom readings to keep the maps very current. Kinda like free updates Bear