fish finder

Might wan't to ask in Ausfish these guy's no the electronic stuff in Aus.
Curious to know me self I'm up for new colour stuff as well.

Cheers.

Hi Frog
I went through the same not so long ago and ended up getting a Lowrance HD-5. These are an all in one unit, fish finding sonar and built in GPS. The mapping that is included is pretty good but ended up also buying the Navionics Gold charts which comes on an SD card.
I have found it to be a great unit with very easy to navigate menu's, you can also have split screens enabling you to have navigation and sonar at the same time. I have also managed to interface it with the Suzuki outboard which allows me to view all engine data including fuel usage via customisable digital/analoge gauge displays. All in all not a bad unit for around the $1k.

Chris

Lots of colour sounders in that price range give pretty pictures, but generally aren't that accurate.
Check out the furuno range as they don't disguise what they are selling. The same computer etc is used in their colour/mono range - the only difference is that one is in colour. Check out the price difference and see if it's worth it for 'just playing around'. Also check out the brilliance of a high end mono readout vs a cheap colour readout for the same price - the mono sounder is much better if you know what you are looking at.
If you want a colour sounder that has some decent punch and doesn't lie (Lowrance HDS etc make 'educated guesses' to give continuity of pretty pictures that don't actually mean too much whilst searching the bottom) have a look at the JRC ff50/ff60. These are a commercial unit that can be user driven for about $1500, or the furuno or koden of about the same value.

P.S. rule of thumb - If it doesn't have a dirty great heat sink hanging off the back they're lying about the power outputs. Good sounders use power and heat up. The nice petite navmans etc have been proven to suffer from heat buildup very quickly, after which they simply reduce power output which is not a good thing.

Ribbit frogy,
I have been looking for a colour fish finder/ gps for a couple of weeks myself, mates advice have been varied and google has fried my brain, I think i will just tie knots in a piece of rope and put a weight on the end, but the missus did not want to sit at the front of the tinnie talking to me.
tom

Been looking for months and my research keeps coming back to Furuno. I currently run a older Lowrance GPS/Sounder combo.