Well, I'm pretty excited as I should be getting a new garmin echomap 94sv system in the mail in a few days! Was able to get a good deal in a one day sale through West Marine. The product has side and downscan, so I shouldn't have any excuse in catching the linersiders now, lol!

Anyway, wanted to see if anyone had any advice for a first timer? Have a general idea of what I'll be doing but any tricks of the trade would be helpful. Also, any reviews on this unit? I mainly fish Lake Whitney. Thanks in advance!

You bought the salt water version. You will have to buy a freshwater map chip to use it on Whitney. The 93 dv comes pre-loaded with 17,000 lakes.

Does anybody know how it compares to helix 7 si?

The 2d is much cleaner. Garmin is a little less user friendly though.

Will Garmins connect to a trolling motor like I pilot? Is there a down side to Garmin?

Yes I do believe that they connect to your trolling motor. As for disadvantages, the main one I see is their inability to use Navionics. They have their own mapping system which I am uncertain if it is as effective. That said, with the Navionics app, it may not really matter all that much.

The Garmin will not network with any trolling motors as of yet.

Well, perhaps I stand corrected

Networking trolling motors with fish finders is more of a convenience than a necessity. You can still have spot lock anchor and autopilot features. From what I seen the only issue with the Garmins would be mapping. The maps they do have are great but they can be somewhat limited with lakes. If I didn't already have Humminbirds I would have Garmins

I live on Lake Palestine and during a bass tournament last year Garmin had a display set up with a guy working the booth telling everyone about their system. I was going to buy a Garmin and wanted to learn a little bit about it before I bought one. I was statding there when another guy aks the Garmin Rep the question to him, if they used Navionics mapping in their system and he stated they did not use Navionics in their units and that Garmin had invested a lot of money in a system to scann with and they were scanning all the well know lakes that tournaments were held on but they were also scanning lakes all over the USA and soon would be better than Navionics. I ask him if they had scanned Lake Palestine and he stated 100 percent of Lake Palestine had been scanned. He also stated they had just finished Palestine. So I ask him to got to their map of the lake and I pointed a spot on the lake and ask him to show me what was there. He ask me why and I told him I wanted to see if they picked up a huge brush pile I had sunk 12 months ago. He stated that area was full of timber and they were not going to take a chance of loosing their expensive scanning equipment in timber on the lake. So I ask him why Garmin was promoting that they had scanned 100 percent of the whole lake if that was not true. Th whole north end of the lake is full of timber. So if Garmin scanned what don't have timber they must not have done very much scanning on Lake Palestine in my opinion. Myself and 2 other guys walked away from him after he made that statement. So I had went on a Trip with Micheal Littlejohn and he had a Hummingbird system and it was great and he tought me a lot about the Hummingbird so I bought the 899 SI and love it. My self I bought the chip to put in my Hummingbird since Navionics has been mapping for a long time and are a leader in mapping water ways and if you buy their stuff you can always get up dates on line.