Just bought a system and building an Ice Kit for the Livescope. I saw it at the Thorne Bros. event in Mpls last weekend. Awesome. It is more of a camera than a traditional sonar and gives a real-time view of what is happening a hundred feet away.
Has anybody else seen this yet?
Yep, I’ve seen it. I have regular Panoptix but I’m seriously considering LiveScope this year. I wish my 93sv was a plus unit but unfortunately its and Echomap Chirp so it’s not compatible with Livescope, which means it’s going to cost me $2,500+ when I decide to do it.
Been out a couple years now i believe. Looks cool but that’s a lot of cash. Would save a bit of time using it on a new lake. I would think if I had it, I would probably spend half my time driving around looking for fish instead of fishing. I guess I wouldn’t be interested now but maybe in the future? I see fish on my graph all the time but getting bit is the tricky part.
I could see it save time on the ice tho. Now we drill a gridline of holes where we want to fish and put the flasher down. With the livescope it would potentially save a lot of time. But then once you drill on top of them, they might spook anyway. Let us know what you think once you get to use it. Likely going to be a steep learning curve.
Regular Panoptix has been around for a couple years but LiveScope just came out recently, like in the last couple months. The difference is basically the width of the sonar cone (Panoptix is 20 degees x 100 degrees and LiveScope is 20 x 135), and a big difference in clarity. Regular Panoptix is like a live or real-time representation of traditional sonar where LiveScope is more of a live or real-time representation of side imaging or down imaging, it almost looks like a low quality video where you can make out shapes of larger fish and structure rather than just blobs like the original Panoptix (which is still awesome).
As far as the learning curve goes it’s not a steep learning curve at all, it’s actually very intuitive. It’s a lot easier to explain to someone who hasn’t ice fished before than a traditional flasher is.
There is a new Youtube of how to build a DIY Panoptix Livescope ICE FISHING kit that is portable and will go over 12 hours on the enclosed battery pack. I bought this kit at Thorne Bros. last week and will build it myself once the gear is delivered. Should be VERY sweet.
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