Finally arrived at a time in my life where I could justify a boat, so I picked up the 2000 Viper Coral 202 in New Braunsfels today. Very happy with the condition of the boat and the price leaves me with a nice budget left for electronics.

I'm leaning very heavily toward Garmin here, with perhaps $5000 to spend on console and bow sonar. I am intrigued with the all-in-one transducer chirp setups as well as possible expansion into Panoptix. I will fish a mixture of targets, but mostly around our North Texas lakes.

With that said, two questions:

1. What Garmin components would you choose to get me close to these goals?

2. Are there technologies from the other companies that get me close to what Garmin can do...and do you feel there is a "good enough" level of capability?

Thanks in advance...looking forward to being a part of this fishing community!

Look into the Onix 10ci SI combo....Simply, Clearly, Better....

I don't know much about the Garmin's other than the few people who have them seem to like them. The Birds and Lowrance units have a following as well. There's more to just getting a finder now that they are networking with other types of equipment. If you are wanting to have a trolling motor that will use GPS waypoints that are stored in your finder then as far as I know, there are only 2 options, Lowrance and Hummingbird.

The actual finders themselves from Bird and Lowrance are both superb units from what I've seen and read. They are both far more capable than most people can use. The question you need to ask yourself is do I even care about networking a trolling motor. If the answer is no then you will probably be happy with Garmin, Bird or Lowrance. If you want to network a trolling motor then ask yourself which brand of trolling motor you like because Minn Kota and Hummingbird work together and Motorguide and Lowrance work together.

There are pros and cons to each trolling motor brand. Minnkota has the self deploy option that Motorguide doesn't currently have. The Motorguide is said to be more accurate and by some accounts, a considerable degree due to the fact that there are supposedly 2 gps receivers in the Motorguide vs. 1 in the Minnkota. Both will drive and steer themselves and hold at a point. The Motorguide will supposedly hold to withing 3 to 5 feet with little to no drift where as the Minnkota supposedly holds to 3 to 5 feet but may drift as much as 20 feet or so based on the comments I've read from owners.

My advice is to read as much as you can about this if you want it and go to both the Minnkota and Motorguide website and youtube and watch demos.

Linking to a trolling motor truly depends on your type/style of fishing. If you are not needing to follow contour or have the motor take you to a waypoint but simply want the ability to anchor then you can utilize a Minn Kota with a Lowrance or a Motorguide with a Humminbird. It is not necessary to link to the trolling motor to utilize the anchor feature.

PM sent.

You are correct. Both trolling motors have the "anchor" function and linking to a fish finder is not a requirement. You can simply find your spot on your finder, drop the TM and then hit the anchor function on either trolling motor but if you want to have the ability to follow contours or select a point on the GPS and have the TM to take you there then it is either Motorguide\Lowrance or Minnkota\Hummingbird as I understand it. I should have made that point more appearant.

Although not the high dollar ones, I love my Garmins with down vu.

SE Kansas grass grower

Loving my Humminbird Onix 10ci SI. I've also got the 360 on the stern and one of these days I'll have my new Ulterra installed and networked.

The Garmin 7600xsv series are insanely good in my opinion. I got rid of my Onix units to run the 7600s and really happy I did. Garmin support is very good (like Humminbird) but their software section is much faster and better.

Updating the Garmins is much better also, you put in the SD card in one of the units and it will update everything in the network.

The Panoptix is almost too much fun to watch. Had Whiskey Bob on the boat this weekend and we saw when the fish came after his lure. I told him he was going to get hit and bam, there it was.

I also have a Gen3 Lowrance 12" and a Simrad NSS9 Evo2, plus I am currently testing a Helix 7 SI from Humminbird. Lots of choices out there. Lowrance just announced 3D structure scan, we'll see how that goes!

Thanks for all the great advice!

I love the idea of auto-trolling and certainly thought of that...but I think the "anchoring" function is more intriguing to me. I just really wanted to see if the other companies had anything that could compete with the Panoptix setup. I also wanted to see if there is such a thing as overkill with this stuff. In other words, if fish pretty much jump into the boat with full 2D CHIRP (down and side view) or 3D Structure Scan, then I wanted to make sure I didn't discard those options. Humminbird 360 is an intriguing example as well.

Similarly, I wanted to see if there were people hear that thought that the cheaper units were all people really need?

I think Diel11 must have been reading my mind. My thinking was the 7607xsv at the console (with GT50 ducer) and the 741xs at the bow with Forward Panoptix. Because my Viper Coral doesn't have a lot of console room (I can even see how I'd utilize a Ram mount), I was thinking I could window mount the 7" unit to the windshield. I also like the idea of perhaps another smaller 5" unit at the console for GPS/charts.

Anybody know if a single 7607xsv run both a GT-50 and a Panoptix transducer? If so, could something like a 93sv be networked with it to have Panoptix capabilities?

The 7607 has 2 garmin marine network ports so you can connect the panoptix in one of the ports. The GT50 will go in the 12 pin connector. The 93sv has no marine network ports so you can't link it to the 7607. But you can get a second 7607 and you'll be good to go.

Thanks, Diel. I had some of that figured out, but not about the 93sv. That's good to know.

Along the same lines, can I save a couple hundred by making the second unit a regular, non-xsv, 7607? It supports Panoptix as well, so I could still hook up the Panoptix at the bow, right?

I guess my general question is, if you have two 76XX networked units, only one has to be the xsv, right?

My understanding is that you can network the gt50 into the regular 7607 from the xsv, and it will support the Panoptix like you said.

Thanks for all the advice!