Marine electronics future

I have been keeping up the last four or so years with where marine electronics are going. I’m mainly a walleye fisherman. I pull cranks, pitch jigs, vertical jig, but my bread and butter is bottom bouncers or Lindy rigs. Maybe I’m not getting it, but how is the new Panoptix or the new lowrance going to help me get more fish compared to my hds gen3’s that I already have on the boat. I can see were a guy could use it ice fishing searching for pan fish or perch, but in a boat i always graph the area first. I can see where you could use the technology pitching jigs ,but if it is calm I can see my jig vertical jogging with what I have. I don’t see how it would help pulling cranks or bottom bouncers. Please enlighten me so I can upgrade to new HDS live’s. I got the ok and that doesn’t happen often.

You can see how fish react to your baits. Works really good for pulling bottom bouncers. You can see your baits out both sides of the boat. It’s like having a flasher in your boat. Its works good for vertical jigging too.

I just bought the Ray Marine Axiom 3D. The unit gives great perspective and acts like a 3D map of the bottom highlighting structure and fish relative to the boat. I can’t wait to troll with it. It incorporates down imaging and side scan, each can be individually selected to give precise graphing when vertical jigging (DI) or casting (side view). Ray Marine cut their teeth in saltwater fishing and are now doing some very innovative electronics for freshwater. The big thing for me personally is the contrast as my old eyes ain’t so good no more.

The integration of the graph and trolling motor that Humminbird/Minnkota have done is a game changer for me. Boat control is so key for walleye on small structure in rough water. Improvements in visibility are fine, but not getting blown off my spot when someone needs help landing a fish or baiting a hook. Being able to quickly duplicate what was successful can make the difference between going home with a snack vs a meal.

I have a 5 year old lowrance HDS unit that is in mint condition but I feel like it’s already kinda out dated. Problem is, most of us can’t afford to just upgrade our electronics every other year.

My new Axiom is not replacing my H-Bird 788, but augmenting it. The 788 (now discontinued) was hooked up to a quad beam transducer at the transom. Now it will be hooked up to the dual beam in my bow mount Minnkota with I-pilot. The finders sit side by side at the back of the my tiller boat while I sit in the command module.

castle-rock-clown wrote:

My new Axiom is not replacing my H-Bird 788, but augmenting it. The 788 (now discontinued) was hooked up to a quad beam transducer at the transom. Now it will be hooked up to the dual beam in my bow mount Minnkota with I-pilot. The finders sit side by side at the back of the my tiller boat while I sit in the command module.

Command module????

Are you one of those guys that calls bobber fishing: POWER CORKING??

Hey, when I’m sitting in my comfy seat with my motor tiller within reach along with my electronics a finger touch away and my I-pilot remote around my neck…a couple fishing poles within reach, and most importantly my cooler right there, I am in my command module

Some day I will upgrade the bow mount trolling motor to one of those self raising and deploying Ulterra trolling motors on my luxurious Jon boat.

castle-rock-clown wrote:

Hey, when I’m sitting in my comfy seat with my motor tiller within reach along with my electronics a finger touch away and my I-pilot remote around my neck…a couple fishing poles within reach, and most importantly my cooler right there, I am in my command module

Some day I will upgrade the bow mount trolling motor to one of those self raising and deploying Ulterra trolling motors on my luxurious Jon boat.

Brother?!?

You must have me confused with someone else, my brother died over 20 years ago.

If maybe you mean something else, please don’t be shy and explain.

B-man wrote:

Command module????

castle-rock-clown wrote:

You must have me confused with someone else, my brother died over 20 years ago.

If maybe you mean something else, please don’t be shy and explain.

Perhaps an obscure reference-just trying to say we have a lot in common-when it comes to our fishing cockpit preferences;) Cheers

The future of marine electronics? I believe that a bow or fixed stern mounted, 360 degree, 3D, real-time, supercrisp and clear imaging is in the not so distant future. Basically, a marriage of the Humminbird Mega/Garmin Livescope/Humminbird 360 technology. Add to that system a few bells and whistles like fish species and fish size indicators and alarms, fish depth and direction indicators, recording capability, and individual fish targeting/tracking capability.

Not sure where the technology would go beyond that – or if an angler would even want it to progress beyond that – because basically, at that point, you stop the boat in a spot and the unit would show you the species/size/depth/movement of all the fish anywhere within, say, 300’ of the boat all in real-time and in 3D.

Give this 10 years to happen.

I’ve often envisioned raising a muskie from birth and training it to wear a camera on its head. I could then send it out to photograph the fish in the area and I could instruct it through it’s earpiece which one to take and bring back to me. It would be like underwater falconry.

Here is the next electronic toy on my list…..
Sub Drone with camera, watch it on your hummingbird 360 when “spot locked” in position….

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Remember how happy we were to know how deep we were fishing.

Dutchboy wrote:

Remember how happy we were to know how deep we were fishing.

I’ve snagged a few of my biggest fish because of my ignorance and confusion about the depth.

The problem with Panoptix, once you use it and see the extra info, it’s hard to go back to a 2D information paradigm or be happy with a small sliver of info after the fact. Sidescan will always be useful, standard 2d really probably isn’t going to be around long to be honest.

If I talk to the guys that are spending 3 grand on fish finders and discover that we are catching relatively the same number of fish I’ll remain a marine electronic simpleton. Seeing more fish has never made them jump into my boat at an increased rate. Heck, I can’t even count the number of fish that I’ve caught over the years that never showed up on the screen at all.

^and that’s why there will never be a law banning locators or cameras for fishing. Ya still have to catch’em.

There are times when I’ve came back to reality and said to myself “if you wouldn’t be so busy looking for fish on your fish locator, you could have dinner by now”.

But they keep improving and that’s a wonderful thing.

BrianF wrote:

Not sure where the technology would go beyond that

Next you highlight you the fish you want and it will send you an x-ray back of its stomach content.

Here’s the bottom line with fish locators.

If I’m fishing in a place with no fish, I swear at myself.

If I’m over fish and their not biting, I swear at the fish.

All in all, I’d rather swear at the fish…

brian schultz wrote:

Maybe I’m not getting it, but how is the new Panoptix or the new lowrance going to help me get more fish compared to my hds gen3’s that I already have on the boat.

There’s several subsets to “panoptix” requiring different transducers.

Which one do you have questions about?