Transducer Suggestion For Tuna and Bottomfish

[remotecaptures]

Can someone suggest a through hull transducer for my needs? I'm looking for something to primarily mark tuna but also bait fish (herring, mackeral, pogies, etc), and bottomfish (cod and pollock). I have a MFD12 and PSU-012. I have a 22' grady white seafarer 228g and usually fish in 100-350ft of water and have a garmin transom mount (GT23M-TM and GT34UHD-TM) 500w transducers but never marks bottom fish and only sometimes tuna. As I understand it a wide cone is beneficial because you have a larger detection area but there's a lot of information and other factors to consider and would appreciate advice. Don't necessarily need the latest and greatest and not opposed to picking up a transducer that was made 5 or even ten years ago if it will work well. Also would like to know if I would need to buy a black box network sounder like the FURUNO DFF1-UHD to use with the transducer.

I know it depends on many things such as the hull shape, transducer placement, how clean water moves around the hull, etc., but can someone give me a general sense under good conditions for how fast I could run and still be able to mark tuna? Cruising at 24mph or only under 10mph?

Thanks,

Pete

 

[Johnny Electron]

@Deep Blue

 

[remotecaptures]

@Deep Blue

haha exactly what I was hoping for

 

[Deep Blue]

remotecaptures,

It all depends what sounder that will be driving the transducer. I know several charter captains who have MFD12s that are connected to DFF1-UHDs and are utilizing the B275LH-W transducer, (42-65 kHz on the Low Frequency, and 150-250 on the High Wide Frequency) and they been quite happy running with that setup, especially for Salmon, Tuna and Albacore.

Keep in mind that using CHIRP will get you more resolution on fish targets within the water column, but is more susceptible to any noise. Where Conventional Wave (CW) Transducer ( with a fixed frequency) pounds the bottom much better and provides you with Bottom Tails.

- Deep Blue