anyone use or ever use a hand held fish finder (sonar) while bank fishing ... unvarnished reviews welcomed ...

 

good fishing ...

 

 

 

 

Back when they first came out I bought an iBobber but it's kind of useless where I have been fishing.

 

The first problem is that the lagoons I fish  are only 7-9 feet deep at most and the sonar cone is too narrow to really "see" what's down there.

 

It was OK for scanning the bottom and finding vegetation and deeper pockets or ridges, but you can't save that data or stitch the scans together to get a broader picture of the basin.

 

The second issue is that if there's any wind at all the current really takes it away from your target area. And my third and final issue is that it's an alligator magnet. With those three items it became more of a headache to use than it was worth.

 

I don't know about the Lowrance that you picture above, but I do know on the advanced Deeper models that they have side scan sonar. For me, that might make it worthwhile.

I recently impulsively got a i bobber, only used it once had the same problems with the depth as above. 

Deeper pro+ is pretty good. Particularly for mapping and finding structure. And it has a kayak/boat attachment so pretty wide range of uses. It does bottom out in the three foot range, so won't map right next to the bank. Has a web app and phone app to look at the maps and historical scans.

 

On wide scan, cone width is = depth. 

If I were to do it all over again I would probably get the Deeper Pro +, but I'd check out the others as well. The keys for me would be the ability to map areas and then easily recall that data, wide cone, side scanning, trip logging, and the ability to add marker or notes to the maps.

 

If the software doesn't allow the maps to be stitched together I'd like the ability to export them to a graphic image so I could stitch them together myself.

 

I'd also like it to come with torpedoes to fend off the alligators, but that might be asking too much.