Damn Wayne were talking bass boat consoles and decks. Not 42 Freeman. Dont know if there is a boat made could handle all that and not get in the way.

But, I like the way you think.

Garmin is the best right now.

If you have acres and acres of hydrilla, it’s not real useful. If you have open water or submerged trees, heck yes, gives them no place to hide. Granted you still have to make them bite and often they’ll just laugh at you.

No they aren’t, only in forward facing sonar. Have you not seen comparisons with Humminbird DI and SI? Birds images beat them all, plus lake master charts seem to be superior. Lowrance is a step ahead with waypoint management and traditional 2d. If any of these brands were the best in all aspects , then you wouldn’t see so many top professionals running multiple brands. There’s a reason Wheeler is running all 3 brands, each is great in certain aspects but not great in everything.

Lowrance’s Active Target (livescope) is supposedly much better than Garmins as well. Garmin makes GREAT portable nav systems for college kids to carry with them.

Truth written right there!


Another downfall with Garmin is their huge cursor icons, Lowrance has a tiny little arrow. The smallest Garmin icon covers up the entire wypt symbol.


But Livescope is fricking awesome!

Who has said lowrance live scope is better? The three people Ive seen post reviews of it and who have all had garmin prior say it needs a lot of improvement.

It was on bass talk live.

For my two cents worth if you are happy with Lowrance, I would stay with Lowrance. If you are happy with Hummingbird, stay with them. As far as side scan/downscan, waypoint management, traditional sonar, they all will get the job done. I had Lowrance Gen 3 on my console and a Gen 2 on the bow. I felt I got enough use out of them, that it was time to upgrade. I was still able to see structure/beds/fish with them as I am now with the Garmin units I just installed. Definitely not as sharp but they were still showing me anything that I needed to know. So with going to spend a little more than $6K on changing out my graphs, I looked at all 3 brands. All 3 brands have improved a great bit that I could have been happy with any one of the 3. I chose the Garmin units because I wanted to run livescope, plus they are so much more user friendly to operate. I primarily bass and now bluegill fish. If I was just a bank beater for bass I would not have bought the LiveScope system, but I would have bought the Garmin units. After watching the bass tracking study video currently being done by the Sam Rayburn fish biologist, I now use the LiveScope system to find the fish. Sidescan/downscan I just use to find the structure that Im going to fish. If I know the structure is there, I dont idle around with the main engine scanning. I am going to keep these units just like I did my Lowrance units and will change them out once I get my use out of them. Theres always going to be a better mousetrap. Buy the brand you feel is best for you.

I still have gen 2 Lowrance HDS units front and rear that came on the boat. I can hardly wait to update, but I really want to see what Humminbird has up their sleeve. If they have 360 and live in one unit, I'm in.

No idea what that is. They must be sponsored by lowrance. It’s got issues right now they are hoping to clean it up by the time it starts shipping.

My opinion is that they cost way too dam much. Give one with gps and Di and I can find and catch all I want.

If only my budget supported this kind of set up!

I really like the huminbird helix line , for me 12's on the bow for my crappy eyes and 10's at console. If the mega live works then that if not a LS set up on bow

Humminbird Solix or Apex. Best side and down imaging, good 2D sonar, 360 Mega imaging, and soon (months?) a forward facing Livescope-type Mega Live imaging. Definitely want to have two screens up front, one for 360/sonar/maps and one for Mega live imaging.

Alternatively, swap one of the birds up front with a 12 inch Garmin with Livescope for rigging right now. Haven't even seen examples of Mega Live imaging yet so it's difficult to pre-order something so expensive on text on page alone.