Humminbird Side Imaging 797c2 Si Combo

[Basskicker]

I need a new fish finder this year and I wanted to know if anyone has actually seen or used this particular unit. Is the side imaging sonar worth the money?

It's the same one that's advertised in BPS March Spring Sale.

 

http://www.humminbird.com/products.asp?id=983

 

Thanks

Jason

[steelhead281]

I want a side image fish finder also. Humminbird customer service has recommended the 737 with a side find transducer. I am trying to get some idea of how well that unit would work. It is maybe $400 total. isn't the 797 more like $1000

Edited March 7, 2007 by steelhead281

[aplumma]

I had the Tournament bottomline series with sideview and found it to be more of a gadget than a useful tool. If you want to spot bait balls with a sonar then you will be looking downward. Remember that a 40 degree cone is showing a 40 foot circle at 110 feet meaning that you are receiving a reflection of the highest point in the 40 foot circle. You are missing alot of detail. I personally like to use a dual beam unit witht eh12 degree to read the bottom contours and the 40 degree as my upper column reader. On my present Garmin sounder unit it tells you which unit you are getting the reflection from by the darkness of the signal. Dual beams are more useful than a sidefinder unit if you are looking for were the fish live and other areas like were the fish are active than just looking for fish.

 

Art

[Garyv]

I have had that feature on my Eagle Ultra III plus for years and agree it's more of a "extra" but not what I thought it would be. One thing I do like however is if I'm trolling a shoreline on a shield or rocky lake I do use it to watch and make sure I don't ding the prop.

[steelhead281]

Well maybe someone has more advice for me. I'll be fishing some lakes for specks this fall. I'm told they shcool in the shallows shortly before spawning. Creek mouths are a good spot to look but actually finding the schools is easier and more effective with a side finder. Am I expecting to much of the gadget

[Crazyhook]

Lowrance!

[steelhead281]

Cabelas say Lowrance doesn't have a side fider

[sonny]

hi all,,,also been looking into the side imaging 797,,,what i think alot of people are getting confused with the side finder or side sonar,,,which is along the same lines,,the side imaging is newer technology,,,and personally i think that this might be the way of the future for sonars,,,if you look at the way the picture is processed and i am sure it might take some time to get to understanding what your looking at,once you do any information gathered is going to help catch more fish!!

[sonny]

oh ya and just fro a stat,,the lowrance can't beat the vert pixles and rms power for th $..believe me i am not putting down lowrance,,,love the machines but thats what i have found in my research

[steelhead281]

Just to clarify what I am looking for...I consider a side finder as a machine that shoots a beam from the boat to the shore. Basically a horizontal beam that would identify the slope of the land from the bank toward the boat and identify fish within the horizontal cone.

 

Some units have what sales guys refer to as "wide side scanning" which is basically a wide angle transducer and sometimes more that one transducer.

 

I'd like the first machine if I could determine if they will work well

 

Are there any experts out there that can advise

[aplumma]

A transducer sends a pulse out at the speed of sound that reflects off of the first object it hits and the machine measures the time and makes a mark on the screen. The next signal makes the same trip and makes the next mark.... on and on. The wider the beam the less detail you will get from the unit because it only sees the closest point of the radius of the signal. The signal is an ever increasing circle from the point of origin. It means that the sidfinder will tell you their is an object 60 ft from the boat but it does not know if it is at the top of the circle or the bottom of the circle which could be a 25 ft+ difference in depth. The wider cones will give you more hits only because they are seeing more area however they are not confining the information to an area you can locate easily.

 

 

Art

[aniceguy]

side imaging sonar like what humminbird has is like no other in the 7 series it uses a 455khztransducer giving you up to 86 degrees and somthing like 400 feet of capture side to side, and an almost life like view of the bottom, they take a bit to get use to reading as you need to diferentiate between the water colulmn, bottom profile and terrain but once you get used to it there is nothing like it around.

 

There is one retailer that prices the unite cheaper then anyone i have seen in Ontario pm me if you like and I ll

[just2manylures]

I was out with a fellow last summer on Lake Simcoe who had one. It really didn't impress me much, it was really hard to figure out what you were looking at. If it looked like the pictures on the Hummingbird website I would have one, but I stared at this thing all day and couldn't figure it out. Maybe that had to do with the fact that we didn't catch anything Maybe you need fish around you for it to work properly ?

 

I'll stick with my lil'Eagle