I'd like to make a suggestion that I think will help you out. You can buy another cable to add length to the transducer cable and the power cables. You can also buy an additional mount for the front of your boat. That way you can use the display unit at either location. It's a lot more comfortable with the unit at the front of the boat when you are fishing and trying to look at the unit. Remember that the unit can be used in side scanning mode or 2 D regular depth finder mode.
Most guys use the Side Scanning mode while motoring around the lake looking for cover. They mark the cover while sitting in the drivers seat going in a very straight line and only going 3 to 4 mph. This works best and gives the best pictures of the bottom while in Side Scanning mode. Remember that you can view the side scanning mode screen along side the 2D Regular Depth Finder screen at the same time. When you see a stump or rock pile you simply freeze the screen for a second nd then move the screen cursor to the rock pile and push the mark button. This saves the rock pile as a GPS Waypoint which you can later navigate back to and fish. Unfreeze the screen and continue along the straight line until you finish your pass. Go back and move along another line parallel to the last line and offset by about 100 ft. You can map all the important spots on your lake and then record all those good looking spots as Way points.
Now after you have all your spots marked you can move to the front of the boat and fish. Just move the display unit up to the front of the boat and set the screen up to 2D mode and GPS map screen (split Screen Mode) and use the GPS screen to navigate to one of your way points. You should have a good minds eye view of the lay of the land around the waypoint or rock pile and be able to maneuver the boat right over the spot.
You can even run your older depth finder up on the front of the boat and use it to fish and just use the Humminbird SI unit to map the lake bottom.
NOTE: mounting the Humminbird SI transducer to the Trolling motor may not be the best place for side scanning operations. The side scanning transducer when used for side scanning must be mounted firmly in place and not moved easily. You have to be moving at around 4 mph to get the best results while scanning in Side Scanning mode. Since the trolling motor may rotate around that will make the side scanning part of the unit fail to operate right. IE you scene pictures will be blurry. Now you can use the Side scanning Sonars transducer on the trolling motor and then switch to 2 D mode and that will work great. But then you will have to look back to the back of the boat to see the screen unless you mount the screen up at the front of the boat with a second mount. You can wire both mounts to accept the control head or display unit. That will be the best way.
Some guys have two units and mount one at the front and one at the driver console.
Most people will mount the transducer on the back of the boats transom and away from any turbulent water flow. That's the key to getting good operations at high speed with the 2 D operations. SI operations won't work at high speeds. You must go slow to get the good SI pictures of the lake bottom on the screen.
I hope this information helps those that are thinking about buying one of these unit's or that have just purchased one.
Mounting the transducer in the right spot is very IMPORTANT. Critical in fact.
Any water turbulence or air bubbles will ruin the transducers ability to time the sound waves to the bottom and back correctly. Remember that sound travels faster though water than air and any air bubbles will screw up the timing of the sound waves to and from the bottom.
Originally Posted by stratos179
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