I'm not fishing today. Took today off. Donnie, saw your post so I'll take a whack at it.
I only used a flasher for a short period. Didn't like it. Saw no point whatsoever in a circular representation of the depth. I've seen where Humminbird, Marcum and Showdown make one with the more logical top to bottom vertical display. The Ice 35-45-55 have a 19/9 -3db cone but the 9 degrees is on 455. I bought the transducer but never got around to fashioning a satisfactory mount for it. The Marcums all work on 200 kHz and have 20/8 degree cones. Both the 8 and 20 degree cones are 200 kHz. They charge an extra $219 plus shipping for their transom mount transducer. Vexilar has a couple that come 19/9, again both cones at 200 kHz. The FL-22HD claims a target separation of 1/4 inch but has a depth limitation of 60 ft. The bottom line for me is that IMO nobody makes a good flasher; good for me, that is. They all assume that their unit is the only unit that will be in use so 200 kHz is pretty much standard.
The Vexilar Edge3 is an LCD traditional type fish finder. I don't think any flasher or 2d fish finder will be useful for looking under docks. Larry already mentioned the problem with either the dock or the bottom being the first hard return and the unit taking that to be the bottom. For example, in 20 FOW you won't be able to see more than 20 ft. You could start tilting it up a bit and find a sweet spot where you could see "some" under the dock but once you raise it enough to pick up the underpinnings of the dock, you're through. Looks to me like a Panoptix solution.
Another problem is ping speed. Ping speed is regulated based on how deep the water is. The unit has to find the bottom first. It seems every brand starts with a very slow ping to get a bottom reading, then regulates the ping speed. That can be a problem with tilting a transducer. Sometimes a tilted transducer just won't get the reading it is looking for to decide where the bottom is. The manual setting for ping speed is pretty much just a suggestion from the user.
Reply With Quote
