Going "Zoomless" for Deep Walleye

My buddy is headed up to little bay de Noc this weekend and asked to barrow my spare flasher. I recently converted my helix 5 g2 to an ice unit and I love it, i think it would do great up there as it has zoom along with some other nice features, but i plan to ice fish this weekend so i plan to selfishly keep it for myself. The unit i plan to loan him is an FL-12 with a proview transducer. He said he thinks they will be fishing in 30 to 35 feet (he has friends up there that relayed him this info)

My question is how well will my FL-12 be able to pick up bottom huggers in that depth range without zoom?

Looking at the display i think he will have a hard time fishing really tight to the bottom (6″), but i think if you get a foot or two off it should be useful. One bonus is i think that proview will be much better for that application than other vex ducers. Its great on IR and the 9 deg angle should help sharpen up the bottom if they are around any ledges. Part of me rationalizes that for many years no one had zoom and it still helped get fish top side so it has to be of some use.

I’m still using my 26 year old FL-8 and just added a proview ducer. He will be just fine with that set up. Just make sure he keeps the gain down. Raising the gain also widens the ducer angle.

If a bottom hugger isn’t picked up on a no zoom mode, it won’t be picked up on zoome mode. Plain and simple it just zooms in. It doesn’t add any sensitivity. You just need to pay a little closer attention and always use the narrowest beam possible.

biggill wrote:

If a bottom hugger isn’t picked up on a no zoom mode, it won’t be picked up on zoome mode. Plain and simple it just zooms in. It doesn’t add any sensitivity. You just need to pay a little closer attention and always use the narrowest beam possible.

This is true although i would think the resolution of the display would limit what is shown at a certain point without zoom.

Joef421 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>biggill wrote:</div>
If a bottom hugger isn’t picked up on a no zoom mode, it won’t be picked up on zoome mode. Plain and simple it just zooms in. It doesn’t add any sensitivity. You just need to pay a little closer attention and always use the narrowest beam possible.

This is true although i would think the resolution of the display would limit what is shown at a certain point without zoom.

Correct. I’ve had it where my lure and the fish look like one mark when I’m not using the zoom. Then when it’s switched to “zoom” you can easily see you are over a foot away from the fish. If you’re fishing in water deeper than 30′ I’d say zoom is very nice to have and will show you things you just can’t see on the non zoomed version.