Anybody rolling without a FF?

Getting back in to the sport, I haven’t paddled the Sonoma Coast in about 4 years. I never used a FF, but there was a lot more kelp then. Made it easier to find areas and never felt like I needed one. Well with the lack of kelp I’m thinking otherwise. It would be nice to see my depth and what the bottom looks like. The Garmin strikers seem like a good deal for the money. Anybody still old school without one?

I always use my FF, LOWRANCE ELITE 5TI.  Without my FF for rockfishing, I would feel like blind. 
I would strongly recommend one with GPS capacity for safety reasons.  Once I was crabbing with my and fog suddenly rolled in got my wife very scared but I was fine since I can return following my trails.

Paul

Honestly I think Navionics on your phone at $20? Per year shows the bottom terrain way better than a FF. It works great for targeting structure or sand as long as you can access and not drop your phone.

I don't use one...but I also don't catch fish lol. Navionics is great though and I run it on my phone

I use a FF, but it was down a couple of times recently, and I think I could survive without one. The thing that I found I missed most without it was being able to see baitfish, but if you mostly fish lures, that's not a big deal.

As far as not sacrificing your smartphone to Poseidon, I use this brand of iPhone case, which has a secure lanyard. When on the kayak, I clip the lanyard onto a bungee, and have the phone mounted on a fixed base, similar to a FF. I can take the phone off the base and take pictures and such, and even if I drop it, it's always secured by the bungee.

https://www.lander.com/cases

I have the striker 4, great little unit. I basically just use it for depth and plotting, and it's great for that.  I also did the Navionics sub this year, but not sure if am going to renew next year. It's good to help find areas to target, and if you don't have another way to verify where you are, definitely super handy.  But, once I've fished an area a couple times, I find I need less electronic help. That's where the fish finder is super handy - I can tell right away by glancing at water depth and my way points if I am right where I want to be or not.

Here is what someone got me as a gift: https://deepersonar.com/us/en_us/products/deeper-smart-sonar-pro-plus

Not as full featured as a typical unit, but it's really great that it is an "all-in-one" portable package. I got the kayak mount also, but it really isn't necessary. Connects to your phone over wifi and plots everything on a GPS enabled map that saves to the cloud. Shows me depth, and picks up most things in the water. Overall, as someone who has never used a fish finder, I find it really handy!

Pretty much everyone does without at first, until they get one and then they don't ever go back 

Pretty much everyone does without at first, until they get one and then they don't ever go back 

Truth. 

I don't have one, but I suppose for a lot of situations a line counting reel would work pretty well too, so you could see the variations in depth.  If I was looking for a minimalist setup, that would be a good tool.

I have a love/hate relationship with fish finders. So many things can break on them, the batteries, the wiring, and the fish finder and they take up room. Some of my best days have been when i rolled without one. finding bait and structure is the most useful reasons for having them so i keep it.

Here is what someone got me as a gift: https://deepersonar.com/us/en_us/products/deeper-smart-sonar-pro-plus

Is there one of these that has a fixed transducers that I can mount to my kayak? If so, I’d get it, and use my iPhone as my FF head unit. I’ve found my iPhone to be far more reliable on the water than my FF…

They sell a kayak mount for it (the transducer is inside the unit):
https://deepersonar.com/us/en_us/products/flexible-arm-mount-2.0

The kayak mount fits into yakattack rails, and is very high quality. The unit/software asks you if you want to use the unit's built in GPS or your phone GPS when you start it up (starts up automatically when the unit is in the water, two metal pins look for conductivity to turn on). The reason I mentioned not needing the kayak mount is that, I think you could just tie the unit onto your kayak and drag it behind you and it would function just as well as the mount and be a lot cheaper. But that being said, the kayak mount is very high quality and I do not regret purchasing it.

For this unit that statement is also true, the built in GPS is so so, but using your phone GPS works great.

Only big downside I have seen is that it uses my phone battery pretty fast. I have not done a full battery test, but based on how fast the battery goes down I think I can get 4 to 6 hours of continues use before everything is out of batteries. They state the unit has a 9 hour battery life, which is probably accurate, but that doesn't take account how long your phone is going to last. Easy solution for the phone is a portable charger/battery pack.

They also sell a "chirp" model, which is a bit more expensive. https://deepersonar.com/us/en_us/products/smart-sonar-chirp-2

They also have a little "extra" that you can use from the app: If you pay for a subscription, they will load their database of crowd sourced depth maps to your device. Now here is the fun part, if you use the unit and upload your maps to the cloud (cloud sourcing for them) they will give you a month free after a certain number of uploads. I have used the unit for about 9 hours of mapping and have "earned" 2 months of their depth maps. They are not as complete as Navionics, but they give you something to go off of.

The Deeper sounds like a cool little unit, and the sonar map support/sharing sounds pretty cool.

 

I'm still kinda surprised that no one makes a FF fully tailored to kayaks.   

I think internal battery, track mount ready, in-hull specific transducer and mount, and weather proof connections would be pretty sweet. 

Ability to swap between hulls easily would also be a nice feature, but mounting inside the hull complicates that.  Maybe some kind of quick connect socket type setup? 

If you buy a FF, dont buy a gimmick get the real thing.  You don't have to have one, my friend out fished me pretty much anytime and never has a FF.  But if you get one, get one you can count on, because you will some day if you are fishing in the ocean.  Be it a foggy day where you are having trouble finding your launch, that time you wanted to return that the spot you got a limit of quickly, finding your crab pots after you dropped them a mile from shore.  Treat it like an instrument, install and care for it correctly, and it can last you a long time.  Arm mounts are not preferred, I'd much rather mount inside the hull than drag an arm around.

The striker 4 is a pretty good deal for the money. I had the portable one on my paddle kayak for years and it worked great. It comes with a battery and suction cup on the transducer so no drilling or installing anything extra on your kayak it was plug and play. Does all the basic things you need it to do. Wouldn’t be good on a pedal drive because there’s no where to put the unit but on a paddle kayak I’d highly recommend.