5 Best Fix/Portable Fish Finders or Depth Sounder (GPS Combo Units) Review

Handheld portable fish finder and depth finder for freshwater and saltwater are easy to install and easy to use on your kayak, canoe, or another marine boat. The water depth can be shown either in feet or meters. They are good for ice fishing, offshore fishing, kayak fishing, lake fishing, sea fishing, and so on. You can also use depth finders on the moving boat with a speed below 5mph. These versatile, wireless, castable fish finders have special fish identifier technology and can readout bottom contour, detect and show you more of what is in the water around your boat — fish location, short and tall weeds, sand and rocks on the bottom, etc. These high-frequency GPS sonars enable you to create bathymetric maps from the shore and get near-photographic images with detailed representations of objects, structure, and fish. Watch fish location, their size and suspended depth as well as underwater structure, vegetation, bottom contour, and hardness. Define water depth and temperature. All models is great for ice fishing, carp fishing, and nighttime fishing.

TOP Fishfinders Comparison Table

1. The Best GPS Castable Fish Finder for Fishing Boat [Garmin]

High-frequency sonar; good interface. Maximum depth 1,600 feet freshwater, 750 feet saltwater. Battery, Mounting Arm, Protective Cover, Universal Sounder Mount can be includedin kit.

2. The Best Smart Sonar, Portable Wireless Wi-Fi Ice Fishing Fish Finder [Deeper]

3. The Best Boat/Kayak Depth Sounder [Humminbird]

4. The Best Boat/Kayak Smart Fish Finder (Wireless Bluetooth) [iBobber]

5. The Best Portable Fishing Boat Fish Finder (Wired Transducer, Depth Finder) [Lucky]

Built-in flashers help you to view your sonar data in the classic flasher format; ideal for ice fishing or vertical jigging. Use the waypoint map to easily view, mark and navigate to locations such as brush piles, stumps, and docks, find fish and hot-spots faster. Depth readout can reach to 100m (328ft) below fishing sonar transducer. minimal depth for these portable depth finders is about 1m (3ft). They generate its own Wi-Fi signal to sync with your smartphone, anytime, anywhere. Sonar is able to create crisper fish arches with better target separation and sends a continuous sweep of frequencies which provides a wider range of information. Fish finder portable design gives you another option to hang it around your neck. These devices have powerful functions — backlight mode, battery save mode, alarms, some modes of sensitivity. Open battery save mode can be working for more than 10 hours. battery supports 3-5 working hours. Some of them have snap swivel connections for use as bobber or as a remote fish finder. Trip log help to specify the date, time, location, water temp, conditions, type of fishing, lure, number and species of fish caught. These depth finders are compatible with Google Watch and iWatch and have free apps on iOS and Android.

How to Fish Using Your Fish Finder or Depth Sounder

Do you want to catch the fish? First, you got to find the fish. Let's take a look at the basics of how to tune in your fishfinder. First things first - if your fish finder has those silly little fish symbols on it, turn them off, all they're doing is taking the data that your transducer sees and dumbing it down to make pretty pictures. When you see blobs and patches you're looking at small fish maybe some perch on the bottom or some bunker swimming around. Other than those fish symbols most of the auto functions when a modern fish finders are pretty darn good. What you want to see is an arch shape. One days when the automatic features are getting fooled you may have to do what's called peaking the transducer to get the sensitivity set right. The first thing you'll do is change the range. You have to make it at least three times the depth. Next - we're going to take the sensitivity off of auto and increase it until we see a second bottom reading down below the first one. Then reduce sensitivity until the clutter is gone but you still have that bottom reading down there, now you're getting a pretty good view of what's underneath the boat. Now that you have the sensitivity set you can put the range back where it belongs. And don't forget when you're looking at fish on the meter if they're down near the bottom, use your zoom - you get a much better view of what's going on now. Notice - all these nice little arches that's a school of fish. Now here's another way you can get a lot more data out of your machine. Look at how the screen is moving across - I can increase the speed that it's scrolling. By doing so I'm looking at the freshest data available - that slows scroll only is showing you a history of what you went over before. Now, what if you're using a side scanner? In that case, the auto function again is very good the one thing that's really important for people to change according to their own taste is the color palette. This can really have a very big bearing on what you see on the screen and how it appears to your own eyes. Now don't forget your side-scan sonar tends to see structure much better than fish you won't see the arches so don't drive around and look for them. You will see really good views of what lies on the bottom. Well obviously there's a lot more to using a fish finder and a side scanner but hopefully, these basic tips will help get you started.

Tips for Choosing a Fishfinder

We're going to talk about how to choose the right fishfinder. I have three really important rules when it comes to choosing a new fishfinder. And the first is establish a budget. Discuss it with your better half, set the money aside, and then throw it out the window and double it. The rule number two. Within your newly established budget, look for the unit with the largest screen size. These days pretty much all the major manufacturers they build with some really good technology, right across the board. Pretty much everybody offers performance that you're gonna be happy with. But a small screen makes that performance possible to appreciate. I guess what I'm trying to say is most folks are happier with a simpler unit that has a bigger screen than they are with a more complex unit that has a smaller screen. The third step what you need to do is figure out which manufacturers menu system best matches your own personal brain. So the unit that's most intuitive to me is not necessarily the unit that will be most intuitive for you. The best way to accomplish this is simply to go to a big box store that has tons of different manufacturers units on display and start pressing buttons. Play with them, try changing the range, adjust the sensitivity, try zooming in, and try zooming out, just do all kinds of different stuff until you get a feel for which unit seems the most natural for you to use.

Interchangeable Color Cover - is Usefull Upgrade for Your Deeper Smart Fishfinder

Deeper Smart Fishfinder, which we tested in the fall and ice-fishing, announced the release of a very useful accessory — interchangeable color covers. They are easy to change, light and transparent. The manufacturer positions them as a cover for night fishing (because they are made of transparent plastic and Deeper have flashing light inside), but their main value to fishermen is the other thing. Colored caps significantly increase the visibility of the sonar on the dark water — in the morning, at dusk or during the general low light, for example, in the fall or in cloudy weather. Users have repeatedly pointed out that the device could be made more visible and — now the solution has been found. It’s nice that the product is developed and goes to meet the angler needs.

Don’t buy cheap depth sounders

If you buy cheap, you will end up buying twice. There are some very cheap fishfinders on the market, but these are the ones made from poor quality material and components, and they can break down after a few months. Buy more quality model as it will be worth price that you pay.

FAQ

Let's go over some frequently asked questions about fishfinders.