LCRs on ice

[Guest]

I have an Eagle Z-72000 LCR, and was thinking about buying a floatable vexilar transducer and carry pak for it to use ice fishing. Is it going to be worth it or should I just bite down and get a vexilar?

~goblin

[Guest]

I don't think the vexilar transducer will work for the eagle. You might have meant buying a like transducer? I do know a lot of fellas that use the lcr on ice with success, I haven't. The lcrs do not operate at "real time". This means that what you see on the lcr might not be there anymore. The Vexilar IS real time. With real time, you can literally watch your jig do it's trick and watch how ish react to it.I think the Vex is a very wise investment. The first time you use it you will wonder how you did without! I also use it extensively on open water.

[David Swenson]

You have to be careful w/ LCR's and cold weather. Anything below 10 degrees can damage them permanently. I learned the hard way. Had to buy a new LCR about 5 years ago. A flasher is the best way to go for ice fishing.

[Gerd]

I use an LCR on the ice. It's an Eagle Supra Pro ID. It's a pretty cheap model, but it gets the job done. It shows me the depth, I can see that there are fish down there, and I can see my jig moving. It's pretty cool to see the big arc come up to your bait and suddenly watch your bobber go down. The only bad things are that cold weather does affect it (I ususally use it in a house so that doesn't matter too much). The transducer is also a problem. It has to be at just the right angle or else it doesn't pick up smaller jigs or it picks up the jig from another hole (it does that anyway, which is actually kind of nice). Hope I've helped some.

[Guest]

LCR's can and do work for ice fishing, but are a little harder to use. The connector on the Vexilar transducer will not adapt to the Eagle unit. As far as it not being in "real time" the delay of a signal being sent, received and processed by the LCR is about 1/10th of a second. The only time this is critical is if you are trying to get readings at high speed in a boat.
Keeping the backlight on when you are ice fishing with a LCR will generate enough heat to keep the display operating at low temps. But not enough for extreme cold.

Rob

[Scotteye]

Not only are they successable to cold weather, but they do not perform as well either.(ice-fhishing) Flashers are "realtime" whats down there is what you see right away. LCG's have a delay, you won't instintly see the fish following your bait up. Granted they both will tell you the depth and whether there is fish there, but it depends what your looking for.

[Scotteye]

Not only are they successable to cold weather, but they do not perform as well either.(ice-fhishing) Flashers are "realtime" whats down there is what you see right away. LCG's have a delay, you won't instintly see the fish following your bait up. Granted they both will tell you the depth and whether there is fish there, but it depends what your looking for.

[Guest]

I am really confused! I have always been told that the LCR has a delay and personal experience would suggest that also. So, let's clear that up. Anyone with facts on this subject, please enlighten!

[Guest]

...... I have a flasher on the bow of my boat. Many times while drifting, I will start to mark fish on the flasher and nothing on the graph. Then, awhile later (seconds) the graph will sound in. The transducers are inches apart. The graph isn't a cheap one either. This is why I depend so highly on the flasher in my boat. I find the general area with the graph, then pinpoint with the flasher.
AM I IMAGINING THIS???

[Guest]

Sorry, this is really bothering me. Is it possible that the processing on the graph only takes 1/10th of a second but, it takes another few seconds to display on the moving graph. In other words, the liquid crystal can not display it real-time? Seems likely to me. A few seconds while drifting can make a difference when locating a small rock pile or ridge.

[This message has been edited by Papermouth (edited 02-12-2001).]

[Guest]

A modern LCR sonar unit updates the screen one row of pixels at a time from right to left. If you watch only the right side of the screen the information there is current the rest of the screen is history. The update rate of the screen is dependant on how fast it scrolls and the horizontal pixel count and pulse rate of the processor. A flasher is only going by the rotation speed of the motor and the pulse rate. The sensitivity level of a flasher is usually higher than a LCR that is set in auto mode, this is why a flasher will pick up smaller signals. If you bring the sensitivity up on a LCR it becomes hard to read due to the history factor that a flasher does not have, but it can detect small signals.
The older LCR had a very blocky display caused by low pixel counts in the screen if they updated too fast the screen moved to fast for users to "see" what the bottom looked like. This caused the delay factor with them. With the new higher pixel counts this isnt a factor until you reach speeds over about 30mph.
Papermouth; when you said you spot fish on your flasher and it takes a few seconds for your LCR to "sound off". This means you are running your unit with the fish ID on in order to use the fish alarm. With the fish ID on this severly limits what your unit can display. It takes repeated signals to confirm what size of a "fish" it will put on the display, this causes a big delay in signal. It also prevents the unit from showing schools of bait fish, they somtimes show as several fish in a clump. If you turn the fish ID off, you will get a much clearer picture of what your unit is seeing. If you run the unit in manual and adjust the sensitivity up it will be able to read a lot like your flasher.

Rob

[minneman]

years ago I bought my first lowrance, a LMS150, It was scheels show model w/loran and speed temp, paid 349.00 discounted as they stopped makeing them, to make the LMS350, so the first winter after owning this I had to try it out on the ice, I had a perm. house then but the unit was cold from the trip out I guess, and the thing stopped making noise, like the beeps when pushing buttons and alarms etc, so since opener was a few months away i decided to send it in to get repaired, turns out they didnt have parts to fix it due to it beeing discontinued, so they sent me a brand new LMS350, talk about a deal! at the time they were selling for close to 600.00, thats when I decided to get my vex, I didnt think anything like this could happen twice!!

[Valv]

I have a Garmin 160. I rigged it for portable operation, putting a regular transducer on a stick. It works good especially since it is capable to display flasher on right side of screen. I leave fish ID on, I mainly look at the flasher response, and I have to admit there is a delay in display and also difference of readings.
The flasher on this unit is not as fast as a regular flasher (Vexilar or others) but you can see your jig and fish coming after it.
Cold is a factor, but I left it many nights in my shack and temperature reached the below zero many times, still it is working fine. It was a cheap solution for me, this year, but I will buy a regular flasher for next year.

[Guest]

Rob, thanks for the info. I do not however use the fish id feature on my graph. I have known for a long time that that is a feature only to be used to entertain children!