The auto chart features are based off of your regular 2d sonar readings. Side imaging and down imaging is irrelevant to that. You can network them but I don't have much experience in that matter.
Based on my trips with down imaging on both the lowrance and humminbird units I can safely say it's not very helpful while your fishing in less than 20 feet of water.
By the time you see any structure or fish you have already run that great big fiberglass UFO over the fish and they are gone.
It is good for driving around and seeing what's under the boat but that's about it. The only time down imaging helped me is when I was outtering around the rock wall at MRGO and could actually see clumps of black drum in 40 feet of water. Made for an easy limit. Never could replicate it again.
Side imaging works even at a dead stop. It's all in how you interpret the data. Those nice pictures you see on the Internet are at a higher speed. Your not gonna get those with a trolling motor mounted side imaging unit. What you will get is information based on boat movement and the way the trolling motor is pointing. Which is handy for positioning yourself at drop offs. It's also a decent way to scan around the front of your boat if you just pivot your trolling motor to locate clumps of bait.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
|