Garmin Fish Finder, Anyone use one of these?

[Snickers]

I have been looking at upgrading the fish finder on my boat. There are some good deals around right now. The wife has given me the go ahead to buy my own christmas gift, nice. I have owned Garmin hand held GPS units that I use in the boat and in the bush. I love their reliability and simplicity. So when I went looking for a new Fish Finder, I found myself looking at the Garmin Echo 500 C.

Does anyone have any experience with these products? All the reviews I have read online have been good.

[Longshank]

For what it's worth, I have looked at many garmin units and they are reliable.

What i do not like compared to other high end units is the "fish hooks' I find that they are not that clean looking on the garmins,usually more of a red blob than actual hook or line, but that is just my opinion.

[Woodsman]

I once considered a Garmin but after reading the specs I went to Humminbird.
What really scared me away was the transducer angles. Far to wide for me. 60 & 120 degs compared to the Humminbirds 20 & 60 degs.
You spread the same power over a far larger area and you lose sensitivity.
The Humminbird 596c HD offers a similar priced unit with far better specs.
Aprox the same power but sent to a narrower area and aprox the same size screen with about 5X the pixels.
Lowrance also offer units in the same price range which are better than Garmins specs.

[lovetofish]

Would the Garmin echo 500 work as a stationary unit? Would it require fitting it with an "ice ducer"?

[Snickers]

Garmin sells a Portable Echo Kit that will turn any of their echo sonar units into a portable to use on the ice or in your tin boat. The kit includes bag and handle, rechargeable battery and AC charger. The kit sells for about $130.
Hope that helps.

Rick

[G-Mech]

I have always had Eagle/Lowrance fishfinders and Garmin Chartplotters on my boat. I got a good deal on a used GPSMap 541S a couple of years ago so I installed it along the with the fishfinder transducer just for a backup. Honestly, the fishfinder part of it was pretty much useless. It was better than nothing but not much. I love the Garmin charplotter but to compare the Garmin fishfinder to the Lowrance would be like comparing a kids Etcha-sketch to a plasma TV.

Stick to a Hummingbird or Lowrance if you want a quality fishfinder.

Sadly, after years of happiness using the Garmin chartplotters, i am changing to Lowrance...I just received my brand new HDS 9 Touch screen with structure scan and it is AMAZING!!!