Humminbird SI?

JUst wondering, on the SI Humminbird, does the kicker when it is down interfere with the siganal from the T/D? Lets say get in the way of the signal

No problems with mine.

Dean, I was talking to a bass guy – I know that was my first mistake . Anyway he was raving about the Humminbird. Can you give us a little review?

Don

I have the 797csi my kicker doesn`t bother but I do have to trim my big motor up a bit to get a better reading to the left. It really does take some use to get used to reading and understanding what your looking at. It is amazing how much structure I have found on mine that I never new was there, in areas I have fished for years. It makes it much easier to actually understand how structure is laid out.

I really like the way I can drop a waypoint on a peice of structure a 150 feet off to the side and come back later and check it out closer. I`ve done this numerous times while trolling. Finding the spot on the spot.

If I had the bucks I would go for the 900 series for the bigger screen. My older eyes do struggle some reading the smaller screen.

I do have to say my Eagle is much easier for me to actually see arches. But I have run Lowrance products for years, so I am more familiar in setting it up.

I would never give up my SI

Quote:

---

Dean, I was talking to a bass guy – I know that was my first mistake . Anyway he was raving about the Humminbird. Can you give us a little review?

---

Don….
Unlike alot of folks here,I am certainly not over educated on electronics.In no way shape or form am I qualified to state if the Hummingbird products are any better or worse than competitive models.With that being said,so far I can report that they work very simply and they do read differently than the Lowrance products in regards to fish arches.The SI is still in the learning stage for me…..but it has shown me some very specific structure detail that has been vey benefical for catching fish.So far I have to say that it is very user friendly and works as advertised.For whatever reason,my eyes seem to prefer the color scheme on the Hummingbird units vs others….must be old age! At the very least,it is always good to have choices,Hummingbird is certainly worth you consideration!

I posted some images here earlier but here are some newer ones I put up on WC a couple weeks ago.

Humminbird 997 side scan shots

You need to plan what your doing when you mount the transducer, like making sure the bottom face is clear the bottom of the boat. And some people have had troubles with their motors or kickers but there are work arounds. In my case I’ve got only a 20 hp on my mapping boat and between that narrow gap and a special transducer I use for tight spots I knew I would have trouble so bought a 2nd transducer with the unit and had a Y cable made that in essence makes the sonar think the transducer is split in two. Worked perfect. Cost more but for me was worth it.
As for reading it, it really isn’t that hard. I think the problem is there is so much more you see that you had no clue about you have to learn. A good camera also helps.
For example, I was looking for snow mobiles, thats correct, but ended up finding isolated 3 to 5 foot humps in 15 to 20 foot of water covered with an odd vegitation. The regular vertical sonar showed too there were a lot of crappies and when I put the camera down, it didn’t lie. I use the side scan most but I’ve been impressed how clean and sensitive the vertical is.
Now I think I’ve found two fish houses, one is in the WC pics. If you look at the one with out the area around the object magnified you’ll see bunches of sparkles. Those are crappies. The camera would almost bump into them as I drifted over it.
The one thing I think people who get them at first are disappointed about is how small things appear, but they quickly learn you can way point pretty accurately off the freeze frame then go back with a reduced area off to the sides and do only one side and you get a very nice shot of the object. If you look at the shots of the boat I found you can see how I did just that.
The one thing I would suggest is taking the extra money and buying the 997. The larger screen is nicer but also it has two card slots so you can run a map chip and record to a seperate SD card. The 797 has only one card slot, so if you went that way you would want to buy the built in maps, NVB package, so you can do screen saves to a memory card.
The nice thing about not paying the extra $200 for the NVB package is you can use the money to buy a map chip that fits you best, thus why the two card 997.
Not sure if I’ll get out this weekend with all the traffic on the water but if I don’t, then likely Wednesday I’m going to be doing some stuff on Green and North and South Lindstrom up at Chisago and likely up date my photos on WC then.
If you got questions feel free to call. 651-982-1401 I get calls for help all the time from people wanting to make their own maps using Lowrances so don’t worry. Doc forwards them to me, especially during tournament times.
WarrenMN

I just bought the 700 series S/I yesterday. It looks like it could be a very nice tool if I can figure out out to mount the ducer right. Anybody have and secrets?

They’ve got pictures posted on the Yahoo Humminbird side scan imaging group. Best thing to do would be join the group so you can get in and look and if you got questions one of the Humminbird techs or one of the regular guys will try and help.

Your more than welcome to check my set up out if your passing through Forest Lake. Feel free to call too.

Warren Parsons

Forest Lake, MN

651-982-1401

PS: will make a suggestion right away. Keep your eyes open for sales on Sandisk Extreme III SD cards. 1 or 2 mb. They save you waiting when you do screen captures and I guarantee you’ll be doing a bunch of those. So far Circuit City is the best deal in town but there are better on the net.

Thanks a lot for the information. Do I need a special add on to do the screen captures?

No, in a menu you set the unit to record a screen capture when you hit one of a couple buttons. The unit also lets you move a cursor if you hit one of the arrow keys which does a freeze frame. Then you can move the cursor any where in the image so you can 2X or 4X enlarge an object in the freeze frame before saving it. Then it saves that coordinate as a way point.
You can also just hit mark and it records the screen capture and makes a way at that exact moment.
If you don’t want to do screen captures you can turn off the screen capture featuer and still use the cursor function to mark way point objects on the screen.

WarrenMN

You can allso record video with the purchase of an MSD card I got a 1 gig I had from my camera when I went to 5 gig.

Pretty neat I can run the lenght of a wing dam capture the video and veiw it at home later on my PC

Wow!! Thanks a lot. I cant wait to get this thing installed and get out on the water.

Are you sure about replaying the recording on a PC. Its my understanding Humminbird has yet to release a viewer for the PC, only replay was on the unit. We’ve been hounding them on the Yahoo Users group for that.
I forgot about another unofficial Humminbird site you might want to check out.

Unofficial Humminbird site

WarrenMN

My apologies mispoke there.

Video veiwing is still on the unit only. Hopefully Humminbird will come out with the software to just pull the SD card and veiw on PC. I really don`t understand what the problem would be since the software in the unit can do it.