LX-5 Summer Use ?

[Huey]

Does the LX-5 have any sort of night mode?

I'm thinking of getting one and I'm wondering how it would be to use in the summer time in the boat . Can you dim the led's at night? Also has anyone tried connecting an LX-5 to a Minnkota bowmount with the universal sonar?

Thanks for any info.

Huey

[NCLaker]

If you go to the Marcum HSOforum, under accessories - I see that they now have a high speed transducer (back of boat), and a puck style (trolling motor) available. These should work for open water. Vexilars are commonly used for open water, haven't heard much on how Marcum's work for open water.

The LX5's do not have a night mode (unlike the Vex FL-20 which does have a night mode that dims the brightness). It would be nice - I've used and LX5 at night, and the brightness can be hard on the eyes after a while.

You could rig up a piece of tinted plastic and just attach it to the screen so it isn't so bright. I'm suprised Marcum hasn't come out with something like the Vexilar MagShield that is Tinted that would accomplish reducing te brightness and also keep snow from collecting on the screen.

[JP Z]

I used my LX5 in My boat as a High Speed sonar..........loved it. Very true it is a bit bright at night, but it does light up the boat which was nice

I also ran an LX2 bow mount and that was pretty slick. I don't know anything on the Minn Kota Universal adaptors and am sure Marcum Doesn't make one. I don't believe Minnkota makes one either so you would have to modify your own....

[Hotspotter]

I'm a big fan of fishing a flasher on the bow-mount!

Having the LX-5 up front is a premium feature for any boat at very little extra cost if you already plan on using it during the winter. The puck ducer was relatively cheap, and the whole thing works nicely on a Ram mount next to my trolling motor. It excels in vertical jigging applications, and finds a hard weedline far better than my Lowrance liquid crystal graph. The other nice part is that the Interference Rejection (IR) is effective at knocking out all the output from my Lowrance X-27. I can run them simultaneously and slide along a weedline getting depths and fish/features from each end of the boat.

The unit is a snap to take out of the winter soft-pack, two plugs and you're done. And the puck ducer comes with a boat gimbal mount for easy installation no matter what you're mounting it on. It's lightweight, so you can get away with the cheaper (smaller) Ram mount if you wish as waves won't knock it around so much. Yet another benefit is that it sucks little to no juice compared to any of the LCD graphs I've run on the front of my boat.

There are a fair amount of guys that still do this, and once you get used to the instant, real-time format of the flasher, you'll have a hard time going back!

Joel

[ChuckN]

Joel summed it up!

I've been using flashers in the boat since the first Hondex FL-8 almost 20 years ago..

I've been using my LX-5 for a few seasons...and I love it. It doesn't lie and it clearly tells me what's down there (baitfish, weeds, suspended + bottom hugging walleyes).

I do use an LCD graph next to the LX-5 on the bow for looking at history, depth and such, but the LX-5 identifies more detail by far. I spend 95% of my time watching the flasher.