17 grand
https://www.trackerboats.com/bass/bass-tracker-classic-xl.html

ha-ha Thats a nice one, only problem is it would be sunk before you reach the black forest on a slick day in a tournament on rayburn in a blast-off derb.

or put a spotlight on that rig and you can change your name to Grandebassslayer

The whole point of "fishing" is "catching".

You can use FFS to locate fish as well as down imaging and side imaging and just fish for them. You don't have to watch the fish react to your bait if you choose not to fish that way. Its up to you.

If that bothers people, then just use your graph in a map mode only and go out and just fish wherever you decide to fish.

Here's a video I watched a while back about how FFS works in reality made by Russell Marine Products. The beam is like shooting a shotgun, the further out it goes the wider it gets, so out about what a good cast length would be the beam is covering a pretty good swath. Even with FFS they can't just drop a lure on the fish's nose.
Personally; like a lot of you I think FFS is here to stay, but there needs to be some sort of regulation on how much you can use on a boat just for cost and I think at some point it would become such a trip hazard on the front deck it would become a safety issue. ADDING ON EDIT: At the console, at what point do the anglers loose enough view and are distracted by all that is going on at the dash that they run over something or some one? They regulate motor horsepower, number of rods, and tackle on a boat, and such. They can regulate this. I watched both of the most recent Caney Lake MLF Heavy Hitters yesterday and they fished out of the MLF issued boats, They had one unit each at the bow and console; probably either 9's or 10's I'm guessing, and did just fine with that.
Russell Marine Video

If people need power poles, five or six depth finders with FFS to catch a bass then I got no problem with it. However watching a tournament when they out out in the middle of the lake using FFS and taking ten minutes to reel in a two pound bass on a spinning rod is very boring to me and I'll watch something else. The problem I see is with those large depthfinders they are unable to see the lake in front of them and it's very dangerous, recently a bassboat ran over a smaller flatbottom boat because the driver simply didn't see them. Luckily no one died.

The last thing we need is more government regulation

I suspect the people most vocally opposed to the use of ffs have never tried it and know very little about it.

+1

I have to wonder how we "olds" managed to find and catch fish out of our 16' aluminum boat with a 15 horse johnson on back. we were lucky to own more than 2 rods and carried all our tackle in a small box.

what happened to reading the water and searching out the fish, that was the "sport" of fishing back when.

and yes, I have ffs and the latest greatest, still can't catch any better.

I never really ever thought about the government getting involved in this and for the moat part they probably never will. This needs to be handled by the tournament sanctioning bodies. Probably wouldn't be a bad Idea for them to all come together at a round table event and come up with a set of rules for all this.
As I have said before, the state of Louisiana has gotten involved in the FFS situation when it comes to crappie. They've adjusted their creel limits to help protect brood size fish from being over harvested but I think that will be about as far as any government entity will go unless there is a sudden rise in boating accidents that can be attributed to FFS or sonar usage.