I've been reading a lot of articles trying to learn as much as possible and almost all of them say "You must have good electronics to locate them."

So what is good electronics? Is a $500 fish finder one? If not at what price point are they considered to be "good electronics"??

Any sonar unit will "locate them" IF you learn how to use them and know enough about the species to look in the right areas.
The price range can go from less than $100 to $10,000+

What if you don't know the right areas to look for and rely on the sonar to find them?

You will need to spend $1,500 plus for good electronics. Then you will need to learn how to set and read them.

The sonar is not going to tell you where to look for them, that will only come with the knowledge of a particular species, and is often made more clear with time on the water.

The first thing I'd ask in all of this is just what species you plan on targeting the most?

The best electronics will not magically put fish under your boat. Time and effort are still required to have a good idea of what your target species will be doing at a given point in time. Aimlessly cruising around will certainly allow you to stumble on fish now and again, but that will get tough when the fish are changing patterns or moving around a lot. And even then, you'll be marking fish, but might not have a good idea of what species they are. Learning the species, their patterns, and the body of water takes time. Two of those three items will usually make figuring the third out a good bit easier though.

For a single unit, $1,500 would be a high end minimum budget in my opinion. Many, many people catch fish regularly without spending over a grand. It's certainly nice to have all the features offered in those high end units, but not completely necessary to find and catch fish. I remember when having a flasher on a boat meant you were high tech, then a monochrome graph, then color sonar, now it's side imaging/down imaging & gps. But the reality is, good fishermen caught fish regularly before each form of updated technology came out. Having the latest technology does make things a little easier (a lot in some cases), but is certainly not a requirement to boating fish.

$500, if spent wisely, can get you a decent new unit, but can also get you some added features if you start looking at units that are a generation or two in the past. If you bring that budget up to about $700-800, then you open up a new set of features/options.

I'm no expert at boating electronics, not by a long shot. Just an average working joe who loves to fish. I operate on a budget just like most people in similar circumstances. Outfitting my boat with $2000-3000 worth just wasn't in cards. In no way do I think that the highest end electronics are a bad thing or wasted money, I'd love to have a couple units on my boat that look like plasma TV's and have more computing power than my new laptop. But they aren't necessary to having a good time on the water, or to catch fish. Not for someone who's willing to learn.


In a marathon; Someone with a real knowledge of species and the body of water, with "mediocre" electronics, will usually out-catch someone with the best electronics who has no working knowledge to fall back on.

Well said! And I think very true!

Travis