Way2slow

A 9" in the console. How'd you pull that one off. I had to make a whole new face plate for my dash to rearrange gauges and do away with the speedometer to mount a HDS-5 in it. I was running the HDS-7 on the bow, the HDS-5 in the console, and HDS-10 on a swing arm all networked together.

I had my HDS-10 on the Ram swing arm mounted to the side. That worked great. It was a whole lot heavier than these Garmin's.

Mine are on ball mounts and came with the plastic covers. I open the mount to release the ball, put the covers on them, throw them in the back of the truck and put them on a shelf in the shed. Along with all of the other junk I keep in there. I'm not saying they are junk, just an expression, there's multiple thousands of dollars worth of other "junk" in there also. I could care less if they get a little "used" looking from handling and not being in a case. To me, that's like buying a 4WD truck and then not wanting to get it dirty and scratched up. I buy one to drive in places I wouldn't want to walk through.

I like two if I'm moving in the boat to fish. I want one where I'm running the boat from to use when jsut running or searching. That one, I want side scan, down scan, GPS maps and charts, and one on the TM to use when fishing. For the past 10 years, that one has had all the bells and whistles also. If my butt is going to be in one spot when running the boat and fishing, one is all I use. In my 14' jon or canoe that I'm just sitting in one seat running the tiller motor, and TM, I only have a 5" Lowrance with down scan. I'm usually just fishing small waters in it and more interested in just the depth and what's directly under the boat than anything else.

Battery life is based on cycle count (how many times the battery is discharged and charged). Battery construction and type material used for the plates helps determine some of that. Battery use and maintenance determines the lion's share of the life. In use, the deeper the battery is discharged, the less the cycle count. A battery discharged to 25% won't last half as long as one only discharged to 75%. Then comes the charging. The most misunderstood part of battery maintenance and the one biggest causes of batteries premature failures. I'm not going into any details on this because everybody seems to have their own thoughts on this. Thoughts on what charger to use and how they should be charged, even though many are wrong. Most have the mindset; they bought the best, or a cheaper one that's just as good as the best, or a charger only charges the battery so the type charger does not matter. A few do get it right, but many are wrong.

Oh yea. Any tournament fishing would love to have had his rig. Hell, I would luv to have had it. If rigging and electronics caught fish, he would have loaded the boat. There was way more spent on the electronics in his boat than I had in total investment I had in the pontoon boat. $20K was probably a conservative number for what he had in just setup. The guy may have been a great fisherman, but under those conditions and it was obvious he didn't know that part of the lake by the areas he was fishing. They look good, but have never produced fish for me or anyone I know. We caught those five in one cove off a hidden hump about 8' deep, where two small channels join, not many know about.

I had to laugh Saturday. I was at the ramp Saturday about 11:00 AM waiting for my granddaughter. Two guys came walking and just standing on the dock with rods and tackle in hand. About five minutes later a guy launches a 20' Nitro with a 250, rigged like a pro. Two huge displays and a pile of other stuff on the bow and a couple more on the console. He's giving the two guys a lot of instructions so I assume he was a paid guide taking them out. I see them through out the day fishing places I would have never fished (I've fished those waters since the early 60's) and a couple other times as they are making high speed runs to different spots. That afternoon they happen to come in the same time we did. I asked how they did, they said they never got a bite. By the way, the water was 51 degrees and a cold front coming down quickly. I didn't have the heart to tell then we caught five in about an hour after giving up on the stripers. We were in a 20mph, 24' pontoon with nothing but a cheap Garmin ECHOMAP 73SV-UHD on the bow and ECHOMAP 93SV-UHD on the console.

Well, I can as of 23 Jan 2022, all fishing sucked In Big Creek, Hart Creek and Little River near Raysville bridge, OOps. that's supposed to be15 Jan

Actuallly, you have a fast idle up for cold starting. If your control has a big black center, pushing it in keeps it from going in gear and pushing the handle forward gives it gas, with it out of gear. Now with that out of the way. I'm having a hard time telling anything about the picture so I will describe what you should be seeing. If you look down the lenght of the bottom of the hull, the transducer body should be centered or a little below centered with the level plane of the hull. The back of the transducer should be down slightly more than the front, a couple of degrees, so it's actually shooting at a slight angle toward the front of the boat. Look where the bottom of the hull turns up at the transom, make sure that is a smooth flat area in front of the transducer. Some boats will have hooks built into the hull there to help the boat get on plane quicker. The transducer can't be behind one of these. Even rivets in that area can cause turbulance to will interfere with the signal. You don't want the transducer much lower than mentioned, it's too easy to get broken off and creates a lot of drag.

Speed is about knowing how, when and where. That's gained with years of experience, and does not come with the boat, nor is it learned from a book or overnight. Like I said, I've have fast boats all my life. My first was a 16' Allison back in the late 60's with two 135BHP Mercury racing engines. Started with one engine, several months later, added the second. No such thing as GPS back then but it was timed at 83mph. Was trying for the record but came up a few mph short. Back in the mid 80's I had a 15' ProCraft rated for 85hp with and 200 on it. I have never owned a full size bass boat that was not over powered. I even run a 25hp Mercury on my 1436 jon boat. I've never had but one accident, and that was with that 16', In 1969 it hit something at full speed and as far as I know of, is still in 90 feet of water today. The reason for that track record, I knew how to drive one, when and where it was safe to go WOT. However, it was not a common thing for me to run WOT because of the amount of gas it took, but it was nice to be able to cruise at 50-60.

Yep, the weather caused me to cut my trip short this weekend. Planned on staying four days, Went Friday and came home Saturday night. They were giving a high chance of sleet and ice Saturday night and Sunday morning with rain all day Sunday. Plus the fact I went to do some striper fishing, and those two days I was there, the only way I was going to get a striper was going to the fish market and buy one. Bunches of them on the sonar at 15-20 feet, but even though it was cloudy and overcast they were not having any part of wanting to bite. That's probably my last trip for a couple of months.

Actually, shoveling snow is one of the main causes of heart attacks in the areas that get the stuff. Us old farts sit around doing very little all year, then get out there and start clearing the stuff, forgetting we are not still the young gun we once were

If it's doing this even with the motor in neutral and revved up past 1,000 rpm, nothing you do with trim is going to help. The problem is electrical and has nothing to do with motor position or transducer depth so anything you try there is wasted effort. Now, if it only has the problem when the boat starts moving forward and gains speed, then that has to do with transducer placement. It's very common for one to lose depth readings after getting a little speed and this is normally poor positioning of the transducer, or units with slower processors that can't calculate things fast enough, but that usually doesn't happen at slower speeds. My pontoon quits at about 15mph but I know that's because of where I had to mount the transducer.

Sounds like the problem is RFI from the motor. This can be caused by the ignition emitted through the air or by the motors charging system and emitted through the power cable. Similar to the old days when, if you ran the Sonar off the TM battery, every time you used the TM, it would make the screen do weird things. To help isolate the problem, temporarily move the sonar's power cable from the boats wiring to the negative and positive of "ONE" battery on the TM, or just take a separate 12V battery and connect to it. Doesn't matter that the TM is 24 or 36 volts, each battery is still only 12VDC. If this cures the problem, then you know it's coming through the boats wiring and you can probably contact Lowrance to see if they have a filter or recommend one you can buy. The units on the market today are usually pretty good at filtering the DC power, so I would ask them about that if moving the power cable works. Now, hope that cures the problem, because if it doesn't, that means it's coming through the air. I'm not even going to get into all the things you would need to do then. That's where, if it was installed by the dealer, you go back and tell the dealer he's the one that installed it, now make it work, and that you expect all the work to be on his nickel. Now, if you are not comfortable with any of this, and the dealer installed the sonar, take it back to dealer and tell him to call you when he has it fixed. If you don't mind waiting a month, and it's dealer installed, just tell him to fix it. You bought what supposed to be a functional boat, that included everything.

If you have to ask this question, I suggest you not get anything considered "FAST". I've had boats that run in the 70's for the past 30 years or more, my last bass boat ran in the 80's. Sold the bass boat last year, now have a 20mph 24' pontoon. Talk about a huge attitude adjustment.

Boils down to, they are your batteries and whatever you think works best for you. With a degree in electronics and many years experience with batteries and chargers, professional and personal, I know enough about them to know how I do mine.

I just noticed this post. I've been fishing Clark Hill since 1962. Primarily Hart Creek, Big Creek and Little River.

A couple of things you should know about your batteries and the charger before leaving them on 24/7. The manufactures have a recommended maintenance charge voltage. For instance, Deep cycle, flooded cell batteries typically like 13.17 VDC for a maintenance float charge. Cranking batteries, dual purpose, and AGM, and LiPo, all have different specs for a maintenance float voltage. Find out what's the best for your battery. Then after a couple of days of being on a float charge, check the voltage and see if your charger is real close to what it requires. I've had chargers that ran a float voltage of 13.7 volts, that's too hot for any battery. I've had some that were as low as 12.4 volts, that's about useless for a float charge. Not all chargers with maintainers run float a float voltage, Some, like the Dual Pro, (which also happens to be made in the US) cycles on and off as the battery drops to a certain voltage level. Now, if you are just depending on that Chinese manufacture to make something that is best for your battery, Good LUCK!

I've always heard the old saying, don't mess with a man that only has one gun, he's probably really good at using it.

Did a search one the internet and knowing Mercury uses it's SN in a lot of cases to identify model year. Mariner was nothing but the saltwater model of a Mercury.

As mentioned, buying and affording are two totally different animals. After selling my bass boat, I joined the pontoon crowd. I just returned from a trip to a lake 120 miIes away I made to do a couple of days of striper fishing. The boat was not setup for that. After spending a week and $200 doing the stuff I felt was needed to the boat, $120 worth of gas for the boat and truck (2500HD 6.0 only gets 8mpg towing the thing), $60 for a site to set a tent up on, and another $100 for the food and all the other junk I felt I needed I had a great trip. After spending almost $400, I just wished I hadn't forgot to take any of my rods and reels so I could have fished some. The trolling motor I put on needed some work, so I was able to fix that, and the wife liked me getting home a day sooner.

4A M 6E0-063065 - 6E0-076814 1985

Yes, most will have already included a base package, that include batteries, and probably some type of onboard charger, but nothing close to the high end stuff available. That stuff is optional, and if you want that, the price of the boat is adjusted accordingly. That dealer may also just ask what you want up front before he figures the drive out price. Either way, you are going to be paying for them, they are not a freebee from the manufacture. I remember those days when you bought a new boat, it was just the boat, and you sat down with the dealer and went through the whole shopping list of what you wanted. They did all the rigging. Now day's the boat manufacture will install the motor, and a lot of the rigging and accessories because that gives them more stuff they can make a profit on.

I don't have a lot of experience with Merc's but have a hard time seeing how replacing the water pump could be causing it to be hard to shift, when it shifts fine with the cable disconnected from the liinkage. Not saying it can't, I just don't see how it can. When the cable wears, it develops rough areas in the bends. When the pressure is applied to shift and advance the throttle, these areas cause a lot of friction and resistance. When the cable is disconnected, it does not have that increased pressure from moving the throttle, shift linkage and gears in the motor, so it will feel as though it's functioning just fine. That's also why you have to be careful about not putting too sharp of a bend in the cable, they wear out quickly and get very hard to shift and go full throttle. That's one time I like an aftermarket part to replace them. Sierra's are a larger diameter and the last couple of times I've had to replace one, I've used their's, they seem to work smoother and last longer.

If it shifts fine at the motor, sounds like it would be tge cable or control. My 2006, 90hp Merc was doing that and a new Seirra HD cable fixed it. It felt like you were going to rip the control off to shift it. Make sure you don't have a radius that's too tight in the cable.