We took the "new" boat out for the first ride this weekend. The Furuno 620 fish finder was amazing. Money well spent!

My old Garmin 160 Blue would lose track of the bottom at around 200-feet, when running at 30 MPH, which I thought was pretty good. The Furuno unit, with the standard P66 transducer, held fast and gave readings to nearly 800 feet while running at 30+ MPH. I was more than impressed; I was shocked!

I look forward to hitting all of my favorite fishing spots with my new "eyes" to see what I've been missing all these years.

Looks like you got the transducer mounted perfectly, to get a reading in 800ft at 30 mph. Think of how handy that will be finding rockpiles in deep water that aren't on the chart.

Now go mark some fish with it! Rockfish are green, coho's are green/yellow/dab of red, and kings are red...

Got the bottom lock?

No shit? Different species of fish show up in different colors? How cool is that?

Something to do with the strength of the echo?

Yep, it's got the bottom lock.

It was pretty damn impressive, even to an idiot like me.

I was kind of surprised that all the shit you wired up actually worked the first time out.

We're threatening to make a trip this weekend...

Dan,

Gain setting and water depth are factors in what shows up to be what color.. A moderate gain setting will give the colors I stated above. Crank the gain too high, and everything is red..

Go kill some fish.

Did you guys end up staying happy with the FCV-620?

Should be a FCV-585 bolted on to the back by the time you get home....

That'll be nice having one of those on the back deck...


I'm still really happy with that raymarine. It shows me stuff..(grin)

We've been having some issues as of late with our Raymarine, ordered a new DSM300G for it this Spring, and Dave and I installed a 1000 watt xducer this spring. Think I'm done with Raymarine, at least for FF capabilities. Still getting some errors on the DSM, though at least it doesn't freeze up anymore.

Time to go back to Furuno with manual settings and the good old rotary dial for gain.

Luckily, the new Airmar Xducer will fit on either unit...

That sucks. What is the DSM?

The DSM is the computer between the xducer and the display unit that interprets the data....

Just another "thing" in the system to go wrong...

Shipped today....grin. Need to order the RAM mount for over head mounting on the back deck, under the over hang.

The Kimber Dawn will be done when I get in next Thursday, get off the plane and I'll pile on the boat and run her home.

I'm thinking we need to lower/tweak the transducer a bit, we lose bottom at around 10kts (with the Raymarine).

I picked up 2 kings mid day at tranquil. I've never seen so much feed, and all the boats are up in the hole/cape area.. I bet tranquil goes wide open in the next week.. It was stacked.

Cool. I am looking forward to using a Furuno again. Never really liked any other FF.

You should probably just try the xducer as is, with the new unit, before tweaking or lowering...

I love it when the kings are hot on the inside water. Glad to hear you are getting some. Any luck at Diamond this year so far?

I haven't looked at Diamond in a few weeks, but it was a blank screen when I did look. All the pressure is focused around Noyes and Moke Rk. Never saw another boat yesterday. Hoping everybody stays up there when the troll season opens!

Yeah..good luck. Hope you find some hot spots and have them all to yourself.

Wish I had a PT permit and a boat...