Marine Electronics reccomendation

[Chucksrage]

I am looking for some recommendations for my boat. I have a 18ft jetcraft(Kingfisher) open sled. I mostly fish the rivers but will also occasionally hit some lakes and sound. What would you recommend for a depth finder/fish finder? should I get GPS? what about side scanning ? I am new to this so please be kind to my ignorance on this topic. As far as budget I would like to keep it under $500

[G-Man]

Side scanning capability in the river would be a fantastic advantage. Other than the fact that you're main work will be in the rivers, this conversation has come up before, several times.

http://www.washingtonlakes.com/forum/vi ... er#p172111
http://www.washingtonlakes.com/forum/vi ... ar#p185561

There are quite a few more, just use the advanced search feature and cruise through all the posts.

[Chucksrage]

Thanks G-man,

[DonGorsegner]

In the last month I added a Hummingbird 597 ci HD, wow what a difference it makes to be able to see the bottom structure. Just having that combined with finding the depth that fish are holding at makes some of my decisions on tactics a little easier. I went to a seminar at Cabela's for fishing with electronics and learned a few things. Having on board GPS is handy for identifing trolling speed, I've also marked soms structurs where fish seemto always hold and know on subsequent outings I always hit those area's. I plan on fishing the lower Skagit later this summer. Being new to that fishery, I will be able to mark the boat launch and than easily finding it again when the day is done, this puts me at ease on a new fishery. This model has the ability to up load charts from a few different vendors, there is so many different things that I can do with this unit it makes my head spin. I found my unit used for 275, so I did not have the option of chosing down imaging, but I'm sure it would be worth the extra cash.

Best regards

Don