Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Garmin Fishfinders For The Sport Fisherman

By Sam Perry


Do you like to go fishing? Do you enjoy it even more when you really catch fish? Garmin has two low-priced sonar fish finders that all avid fishermen should take a look at. With many of the features of top-end models, the Garmin 300c and 400c may just be what you're looking for to enhance your total fishing experience. Either model will let you to discover where the fish are, and discern the sizes of the fish. Although similar in many ways, there are a few slight differences between the 300c and the 400c that you should be aware of before the decision to purchase.

Designed to operate on both lakes and oceans, either of these designs would be a great accessory for your fishing boat! The Garmin 300c is a 400-watt dual beam version and offers a wide fish-finding cone, reaching incredible depths of 900 feet (274.32 m). The 400c gives you the option of the dual beam or a 500-watt dual frequency transducer that lets you to reach a mind numbing depth of 1,500 feet (457.2 m). The dual-beam cone system has duel settings: 15 or 45 degrees going out from the boat. The narrow beam uses a high frequency and, in turn, returns high definition data. The wide beam uses a lower frequency, letting you see the contours of the bottom and objects that are not directly under the craft, although they will display at a lower definition. The dual frequency transducer, available on the 400c, can send out both high and low frequencies at the same time, so you can see both narrow and wide returns on the split screen.

Each of these Garmin Fishfinder models has a high-resolution, 256-color screen, that is easily readable even when in the direct sunlight. The only difference between the two is the size of the display screen: a 3.5-inch on the 300c and 4-inch on the 400c, both displaying 240x300 pixels. The crystal clear color readout makes it easy to determin fish from junk. A night mode allows night readability and a backlit keyboard makes it simple to operate at night.

Both the Garmin 300c and the 400c units offer Ultrascroll, Fish Symbol ID, A-Scope, Auto Gain and Whiteline functions. Ultrascroll is a feature that moves the sonar from right to left at a high speed giving faster updates on the display and showing fish even while you are cruising across the water to a favorite fishing hole! Fish Symbol ID helps to distinguish between unsimilar sizes of fish so you are not chasing guppies instead of salmon. A-Scope allows you to see a real-time display of fish passing through the transducer beam. Both of these great sonars have an auto gain feature, which controls the sensitivity on the sonar depending upon the density of the water, or fish. Whiteline determines whether the bottom is hard or soft and lets you to distinguish different types of debris on the bottom. They also have alarms that can be set for different alerts: the presence of fish, low battery power, and shallow water - you get to set the alarm depth! Turn your alarms on and say adios to dead batteries and ruined propellers.

Split-screen capability lets you to take full advantage of real-time information, such as water depth, temperature and speed (for river fishing) one side and real-time fish traffic on the other side. Each model has both 2x and 4x zoom functions for telling bottom density and/or fish size. An automatic save function for your preferred settings allows you to dial in your preferences one time and they will be save when you turn off the unit. This saves having to re-program your preferences during a fishing excursion that lasts longer than one day.

The biggest distinction between the two units is the CANet-compatibility of the Garmin 400c. CANet is a communication protocol that allows integration of data between the 400c and other Garmin chart plotters such as GPS on your boat, making the 400c a true part of your navigation system and not only a enjoyable fish locator. One happy customer said, "I have a Garmin GPSMap 496 and I use it along with my 400c. The two units work together very well. Even in the middle of the sea I can never get lost!" Another happy customer says, "I recently purchased a Garmin Fish-finder and was pleasantly surprised to find it works right alongside my chart plotter."




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