marcum or vex for boat

[frabillfisher]

Just wondering if one has an advantage over the other in open water,going to use it for ice to

[MRWALLEYE2005]

I use the Vexilar for boat and ice fishing but theres probably not a big difference between them. Probably most people will say the Vexilar but its up to you and how much you want to spend.

[Paul Waldowski]

frabillfisher,

I have the Marucm on the bow of my boat this year. I had a Vex the 4 previous years. The one thing that I found was the Marucm is a lot easier to read in sunlight, not to meantion the better target seperation. I will be sticking with Marcum. Just my .02

[gspman]

If you have a Minnkota trolling motor with Universal Sonar you can't hook a Marcum up to it. You can with the Vex. Other than that they are both good. I personally think the Marcum is better but I only use it for ice fishing. I know the Vex has something called bottom lock which might be useful when your boat is bobbing in the waves.

[Chris-Neises]

I have a FL-18 mounted to my Minnekota. I have caught loads of walleyes I wouldn't have without it. I upgraded to the universal sonar system. I think it is well worth the extra $$'s just to avoid the wiring mess. Also the Vex has the low power option which I don't think the marcum does.

[LocalGuide]

I have a Fl-18 mounted to the trolling motor in the front and a Marcum mounted in the back.

For open water use, I would vote for the Vex 9 times out of 10. I love to use the bottom lock feature, in direct sunlight I can see it good enough, and sometimes I use the low power mode for some shallow water fishing.

The Marcum I don't mind, but the one thing I do miss a lot is the Bottom Lock feature on the Vex. Once I got used to that I loved it. I see a lot of fish with that and its easy to tell how far the weeds are off the bottom and just a bunch of other things.

I just mainly have the marcum for trolling over suspended fish and other things like that. Between the Marcum and the graph, they take care of that pretty good.

Until something else amazing comes out, the Vex will stay in the front of my boat.

[Traxxx]

Is their a bottom lock on the FL-8? Thanks.

[LocalGuide]

Nope... the Fl-8 has no 6' zoom on it.

The Fl-18 just has the zoom feature. Thats what the bottom lock feature is for (zooming in on the bottom 6').

On the Fl-18, Auto Zoom is for winter time use and Bottom Lock is for summer time use.

[Traxxx]

Thanks, should have spent the extra money for the Fl-18. Now it seems worth it. Oh well, they hold their value good