I fish from a canoe and need to know more about what's going on below me in the water, namely water temp and depths/dropoffs. I'm basically oblivious about fish/depthfinders. I know some guys have them in their kayaks, and some probably have them in their canoes.

I'm looking at the Humminbird 120 Fishin Buddy because it looks pretty simple and transportable (and inexpensive).

Anybody have any experience, good or bad, with these units? Can I hook it up to my trolling motor battery? Any other suggestions?

I have one of the older Fishing Buddies made by Bottomline(before Hummingbird took over). It shows water temp., cover, structure and fish. I fish small water from a 12' flat tin. It serves all my needs quite well. And I got mine from Cabela's on closeout for 40 bucks. They operate on AA batteries and will not run off your trolling motor battery.

Hope this helps,

Ken

Like the previous post, I've got an older Bottom Line version of the Fishing Buddy. Mine runs off of 4 C cell batteries (or 3, I'm not certain at this moment) I got it when, back in the day I was dependent on borrowed boats, or I fished waters where people kept jon boats on the lake.

I thought it worked ok. It worked better when I got an extra mounting bracket, which made moving it from side to side on the boat much easier.

The only down side I remember was that it ate batteries,i.e. new batteries would last all day, no problem, but they were unlikely to last very long into a second trip. Basically every time you wanted to go fishing you had to drop 4 bucks or so on batteries. Not a really big deal, but a pain in the butt.

I haven't traded or gotten rid of my unit on the off chance that I might go fishing from a borrowed or rented boat some time and I might need it.

I don't have the battery eating problem. I normally change the batteries once a year. I changed the batteries in January and they died last week (the last week of September). I probably fished 15 - 20 times this year. And mine uses either 4 or 6 AA.

Ken