I recently bought a 15' aluminum canoe just to get off shore from some local ponds where I fish. I was thinking about getting one of these Hummingbird Portable Fish Finders to mostly see depth, structure, and temp of the waters I fish, although it would be nice to find fish, and the two higher models even have Side Imaging.

I have read a lot of reviews from Bass Pro and Cabela's websites, and customers seem to be overall pleased with these things. Only Negatives I heard about was that the unit wobbles around at higher trolling speeds since it is clamp mounted. I would be using this at paddle speed, or using my transom mount trolling motor, not trolling around with an outboard, so this negative doesn't really concern me.

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of these things? The mid range model is only $120, so I'm thinking about getting it soon to try out for the rest of the year. They even double as Depth Finders for Ice fishing which is cool. Any info or comments would be appreciated. I was also looking at other Portable Sonars, but I dont know how a suction cup transducer would work on a car top since launching is usually rough and consists of us pushing off from shore. I would imagine that this wouldn;t work unless I mounted the transducer to the trolling motor.

Posted Sat Jun 09, 2012 8:43 am

i have one. and it workks great. i fish out of my kayak and troll with it...gives great bottom detail..havent used it to find schools of fish though.. im goin to bring it to new hampshire and locate schools of perch in the pond....i bought mine at dicks sporting goods..get down there fast cuz they go fast..it took me a while to get one...cuz every time o went they ran out...good luck and let me know how you like it

Posted Sat Jun 09, 2012 5:01 pm

i have one. and it workks great. i fish out of my kayak and troll with it...gives great bottom detail..havent used it to find schools of fish though.. im goin to bring it to new hampshire and locate schools of perch in the pond....i bought mine at dicks sporting goods..get down there fast cuz they go fast..it took me a while to get one...cuz every time o went they ran out...good luck and let me know how you like it

Posted Sat Jun 09, 2012 5:02 pm

i have the Hummingbird PiranhaMax160PT for my kayak and it works excellent for fairly short money($130) and comes with everything(battery,charger,etc) It came with a suction cup to attach transducer but i scraped that and put it on a pivoting rig to make it more permanent,and a bag too keep the unit in but i set that up permanent too.if your using a trolling motor it'll mount great on it.My original thoughts were just depth and water temps but it works excellent finding structure and fish.i put some pix up on my page check em out

Posted Sun Jun 10, 2012 4:41 am

I rock the Hummingbird 160 for a kayak, and it does everything I need. The portable system is easy to use and operation. The battery has a long life. The suction cups sometimes pops off if I wrap some lilies around it, but it easy to reattach while on the water. I usually don't attach my transducer until I am on the water to avoid the rocks.

Posted Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:19 am

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