Dear all,

I want to replace my old Humminbird fishfinder and have problems to
decide for the right model.

What do I want:

Price
- A fishfinder for up to 600 USD (US domestic price). I do not need a
combined fishfinder/GPS unit. I am willing to pay even more for a real
quality.

Fishing positions, depth
- I am fishing in Northern Adria (salt water), the positions are
nowhere deeper than 70 feets.
- I am primarly fishing fishes on the bottom. I always fish with the
boat anchored.

Most important features I want
- I want to accurately differ between sand, rocky, mixed, grass and
moddy bottom because most of fish habitates on small sand pockets and
borders between rocky bottom and sand. There are no fishes on moddy
or grass bottom.

- Beside exactly knowing the type of bottom I wish to detect medium
sized fishes (10-20 inches) close to the bottom (less than 6 feets).
It would be a great advantage if I would know the position (left,
right, below) of the fish regarding to the boat.

What I don't need
- probes for deeper water
- I need no long distance side views since I am not interested in
fishes more than 5 feets above the bottom.


On base of available information on the Internet I concluded
following:

- I need a probe with an as high frequency as possible. The low
frequency band is not interesting for me at all.
- I prefer to have more direction oriented sensors in the probe. This
would allow me to find the relative position of the fish regarding to
the anchored boat.
- I prefer a modern device with a high resolution display and as high
proccessing power as possible. Color is not so important.


My (amateur) opinion:
At the first glance it seems that the 3D Humminbird Matrix series
would be the best option for me.
In fact I am not interested in the 3D view but more in the six
sensors in the Matrix's probe.

The six 16 degree sensors will allow me to locate the relative
position (left, beyond, right) of the fish compared to the boat. I
will add a mechanism to be possible to rotate the probe for 90 degrees
to see the complete bottom (circle) beyond the anchored boat.

The 6 sensors frequency is 455kHz, that seems optimal for dephts
around 50-60 feets.

No models from other manufacturer have similar characteristics.



Problems and questions:

I thought that my decision was correct. But after that I found
relatively bad customer feedbacks on the net forums. There are a lot
of comments that 3D fishfinders are only toys. This is also the
opinion of professional and sports fishermans in Croatia I spoked
with. Most of them are proposing me to decide for a Lowrance or Furuno
model insted of experimenting with a 3D Hummininbird.

Even a Humminbird fishfinder seller said me I should rather decide for
a good 2D model.

Please advice
- which model you would prefer for my application
- pluses/minuses compared to the Matrix 3D models from Humminbird.


Best regards.

Peter