Depth Finder On The Bow/Trolling Motor

With all the old and new sonar, sonar/GPS combos out there, I am interested in knowing what all you bass guys have mounted on the bow mount trolling motor.
Does anyone have a color unit? Is the extra money worth it for a trolling motor and bass fishing?
What are your thoughts or experiences?
Do you just use them to follow weed lines and drop offs or do some of them actually show fish in the weeds?

Fishing the river i really don’t use the unit to locate fish, i do use it to locate drop offs, bait fish and water temp. Remember the locater can show you whats under the water but you need to be able to transform that into determining the best locations and ares that may contain bass. Once i am in shallow water i basically do not uae a depth finder for anything other then water depth.

I have both a flasher and graph up front…However i rarely use either to look for fish. They are for depth finding and locating structure.

If i find what looks to be good structure or break line, i might not see any fish on the graph anyway, but don’t let that throw ya for a loop….If you do indeed find a nice location, the fish will be there…Start Casting

I have to agree with the others as well. If you fish the river mostly you can get by with a simpler unit. If you spend much time on lakes with deep structure and weedlines, you will rely more on your electronics. Just like anything else, you need to think about your applications and work from there.

All that being said and done here is a note that might save you some bucks. I have ripped the cable off of a lot fewer tranducers since I started attaching them to the shaft with electrical tape instead of zip ties. When you get hung on something with the zip ties they cut into the wire. With the electrical tape there is some give.

The only time I use the bow mount depth finder to find fish is on the lakes, not on the river. I agree with the others, it is that other info, depth, structure, temp and bait, that helps more than anything else on the river. I have gone to a new Minn Kota trolling motor with the universal built in sonar, it is so nice not to have to deal with the extra cables and attaching the transducer to the head of the motor.

At Guntersville we pulled up next to Larry Nixons Stratos and he had an old black box Lorance flasher mounted up front. Talk about old school ! This unit was probably 30 years old. I bet “he” can learn just as much from that as I could from a fancy color unit.

Fun facts to know and tell. The motor used to drive those old flashers was the same one that was used for a REEL to REEL tape deck.