hand held depth finder.

[793bob]

just wondering if anyone has a hand held depth finder that shoots through the ice.how good do they work.my wife just bought me one made by hawkeye.

[senco 1]

I have one made by Strikemaster and it works great. Put a small amount of water and top of the clear ice and it will shoot right through it.

[BucksnDucks]

I've got the marcum. It is alrite I would say. Hard to find clear ice that isnt to thick to shoot through and get a reading. 1 thing i notice is that if the battery gets weak it really dont work worth a darn. The convience of throwing it in ur pocket is very nice tho.

[KyleM.]

I have one made by Strikemaster and it works great. Put a small amount of water and top of the clear ice and it will shoot right through it.

lol, after this snow, you won't need to worry about putting a small amount of water on the ice.

I've used them before they seem to do pretty good as a reference, seemed to very in less than clear ice though, the Hawekeye we had.

[maxx rpm]

My wife got me one last year. Was a really nice gift, but i asked her to return it. With the knowledge of lakes i fish, and the h2o, not really a necessity for me.

[timbo147]

I have the one made by Polar Vision, it works good for going hole to hole chekcing depth. If you can get out during early ice it works good through the ice but later in the season when there is snow on the ice it's just as easy to drill a hole than clear all the snow off the ice to use it.

[Esox_Magnum]

Any flasher can shoot through the ice, seldome will it mark you fish unless its ultra clear ice but will give you depth.

[leech~~]

One of my buddies has one and later in the year he had to drill and check depths. Since he only had that and no other flashers. I suggested that he build a little stand for it and use it like a flasher in his hole. I'm not sure if he ever did it but I would think that you would see the depth numbers go up and down as fish came in? Huum.

[DinnerPail]

I also have one made by Polar Vision. I use it for checking depths when putting out the spear house. I use my small propane torch and melt the ice alittle instaed of pouring water on the ice.

[FishnUMD]

i used to have a handheld one, a polar vision i believe (blue flashlight?), before i had a fl-8. worked great, but once i had the fl-8, there wasn't a reason to use the handheld anymore, as both performed pretty much the same through various ice thicknesses. one advantage i found with the fl-8 and just had with my lx3, was the ability to also mark fish through the ice.

a few days ago, i was hole hoping for crappies and couldn't find them in any of he holes i had drilled. so decided to go check for depths and find the deep hole i was lookin for. we had a good 10 inches of crystal clear ice so i was able to check depths with just a little water on top of the ice. while checking depths, i saw a tremendous amount of markings from 3'-10' off the bottom in 32' of water. drilled a hole on the spot, and sure enough, ended up catching a limit of 11"-13" crappies.

now of course, like everyone is saying, with all this snow it is unlikely that i will be able to do it again this year, but i will definately be doing it again next year, if possible, instead of drilling 40-50 holes a day.