report on lcd vs flasher fishfinders

[Jedburton]

Well after fishing scofield yesterday I thought I would report my personal opinion after a side by side comparison of my cabelas vxr and my lowrance x102c fishfinders. After spending most of the day testing both I found that there are a lot of things I like about both. The lcd fishfinder had a lot of options as far as different views that made it easier at times to see the fish. It was a lot more sensitive than the ones I have used in the past (It should be, however, because it cost about 3 times what my old ones had). It has a really cool option for night fishing where the fish show up a neon green on a black background. I could see my 1/32 oz jig easily on the screen and only seemed to lose about 1-2" off the bottom ( I had heard from a few people that with lcd fishfinders you can't see the botom foot). I did like as kent stated in my last post that you can see a history if you happen to miss a fish going through. I also tried the flasher function and although it was a little harder to read it worked well. I had to turn up the interference rejection to stop getting interference from slayerace's vexlar 18 but after that I had no interference at all.
As for the cabelas VXR (same as the marcum vx-1 except it has the color upgrade). I Was extremely impressed with how well it worked. it had no problem at all detecting the 1/32 oz jig. I liked that the response time was quicker than with the lcd fishfinder and knew when the fish were there a bit quicker than with the lcd finder. It was a bit harder to get rid of the interference from the lcd finder than it was to get rid of the interference from the other flasher (vexlar) on the marcum vxr (that was expected somewhat though because the lcd fishfinder is 2500 WATS vs 600 WATTS on the flasher).

My final 2cents is that if you are looking for something that you will mainly be using to ice fish, for the low cost that it is, that vxr from cabelas is a great little unit that works extremely well for what it costs. If you are looking for something to use both on the boat and on the ice the lcd finder ,although considerably more expensive, works very well.
jed
p.s. This is just for clarification I used the cebelas marcum vxr vs the lowrance x102c to test. Others may have different results using different fishfinders. Once again just my 2 cents.
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[Fowl-Hook]

The accuracy any unit picks up the bottom depends on how flat the bottom is. If you are above a sloping bottom, all graphs pick up the shallowest point and reference it as the bottom. That reference point is to the outside of your cone angle, so when you drop you gig to a point on the graph where the bottom is indicated you can drop it some additional distance depending on how sloping the bottom is. Fish can also go unindicated in this false bottom your graph can not see into.
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[Fishrmn]

That is what the "grey scale" is for. If you have your unit set up properly, and are watching carefully, you'll see the fish or jig in that section of the graph that is showing the "bottom". Fish show up better than a jig in that situation.

Fishrmn

[Fowl-Hook]

Grayline is a Patented Lowrance feature that helps you distinguish between hard and soft bottoms, where the thicker the Gray band the harder the bottom. It can help separated fish that are hugging a hard bottom that is flat. There may be 3D units that indicate a sloping bottom but I have not seen one as of yet. Gray scale is a terminology that other manufactures use for the same feature.
Ice fishing is indeed the ideal place to learn and compare Graphs, a unique opportunity to have the transducer perfectly motionless.
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[Theekillerbee]

Nice comparo Jed. I think you cannot go wrong with either unit as long as you put in some time to learn how it works.
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[icerman]

Thank you for your informative post. I have compared the two (lcd vs marcum) and would agree with your recommendations. I prefer the flasher for ice, lcd for boat.
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[Old_Coot]

[font "Comic Sans MS"][size 2][#002850]Well done Jed. Fascinating read and a great field test comparison. Thanks for sharing.[/#002850][/size][/font]
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[Jedburton]

thanks for the comments it was a lot of fun conducting my "experiments"
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