2012 Favorite Open Water Depth Finder Poll

[marine_man]

As I've done in the past (but not last year)...

If you were to buy a new Locator today for open water fishing, what brand would you purchase?

[delcecchi]

Should have been a button for "don't know yet"

[AaronM]

Eagle could probably be removed.

[marine_man]

Results from past years for comparison:

2008:

2009:

2010:

marine_man

[JohnMickish]

It is not hard to understand why Humminbird is grabbing a larger share of the market. Adding Lakemaster was a huge deal and now that they have the Ilink it's almost a no brainer on which one to run.

[Dbl]

I did just buy new yesterday, the Lowrance Elite 7 HDI to go on my new Pro Guide 1825. For me it is not a no-brainer to buy Hummingbird. The Lowrance Insight is the same basic data they had when Lakemaster worked on their units. I bought an Insight chip last year that has 1- to 3- foot contours covering Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, plus Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake for the price of ONE Lakemaster chip.

I run an Ipilot but the "no reverse-compatibility" with existing i-Pilot systems means that you can not simply purchase the control unit and use it with an existing i-Pilot system. You have to buy the i-Pilot Link system and install it after removing the existing i-Pilot system at the cost of $800! Plus another $130 or so on another Lakemaster chip to get it to follow contours.

To each his own, but going Lowrance was in the best interests of my budget. I am guessing I will still be able to catch a fish or two this year!

[JohnMickish]

You can't really go wrong with either Lowrance or Humminbird. Both have an advantage in certain areas over the other. The great thing about the technology race going on in the electrnics arena is that we the customer win . The bad thing is that winning isn't cheap .