Garmin Upgrade

[sixtysix]

Hi All.

Have been looking at Fishraider now and then for couple years now but today is first contact.I need some advice please.

Two years ago I bought a Garmin Echomap  Plus 95sv with a GT51TM transducer.Seems the 95sv now discontinued.Downvu and Sidevu work great but after 40 odd metres Sonar has trouble marking individual fish.

Options are;

1.Keep the GT51 and upgrade head unit to Garmin GPSMap 8410xsv(if I can find one)With Pixs at 1920x1200 sounds good

2.Upgrade to 1KW thru hull as well as the GT51.Will these two work together on the 8410xsv?

I basically only fish ocean 40 to 90 odd metres and the Fads when weather allows.Kiama,Shoalhaven,Narooma.

My boat,1999 Seafarer Viking.Open to ideas only Garmin range and would be good to see anyone’s screen shots.

Thanks in advance.

SS

 

 

[Rebel]

Welcome aboard.

@JonD is from Narooma. He may be able to help you.

Cheers.

[JonD]

What you have is already pretty good and should show individual fish if you play around with the settings.  

I fitted a 105sv with a gt54 in my daughters boat which works great at showing individual fish around Montague and even out at the sea mounts (tuna) with the depth set to 80m.

My own boat has the 8410 with a gt51 and an airmar 175hw, both pick bottom in over 400m of water. The difference over the snapper grounds in 60m of water between the transducers is almost impossible to tell. The wide cone of the 175 is good on kingfish but again barely any different from the two. I also have a panoptics p30 which is so much fun to use with plastics and kings. The difference between my outfit and my daughters, again is barely noticeable even though my setup is around to three times the price of my daughters.

Before you go changing anything make sure you fully know how to get the most from the unit you have. Garmin have good YouTube seminars and Ryan Moody does a paid online course you can watch at your own leisure over and over. 

Something people often forget is things like you already mentioned 'screen resolution" and yes the 8410 has heaps of it. Yes that res will certainly help show fish but in the depths you mention so will your head unit and there are tweaks to increase this such as being able to stretch echos, increases gain, increase screen speed etc etc. By the way the 8410 seems like a very small screen in real life as the black borders that don't show video are part of that diagonal 10ins.

A big gain is manually setting an upper and lower depth. For instance if you are looking for fish in 100m of water and mostly searching for bottom species, then set the screen to show 80-110m of water, that way you are using all the res of the screen for just 30m of water rather than letting the auto decide which will most likely use 140m of water. When Im deep dropping in water deeper than 300m I can barely see any changes on the sea floor left in auto but if I set the unit to scan just the bottom 30-40m I see any changes and often even small fish.

[mrsswordfisherman]

Welcome to fishraider @sixtysix

I have moved this report to Boating section

[Rebel]

Thanks @JonD

Cheers.

[sixtysix]

Thanks everyone.

I’ll revisit settings a bit more.

SS