Thread: Transducer/sounder upgrade advice

I need some advice from someone who knows what there doing.

I have a Simrad GO7 XSE and total scan transducer. It struggles in water over 200m deep and I want to see things deeper.

Is there an easy transducer upgrade that will allow me to find Hapuka etc in deeper waters that’s compatible without too much mucking around?

Go7 (not a product I know well) has a very limited range of transducers which are compatable.
Generally the deeper the water the lower the frequency should be.
Most modern fishing boats run 28 or more commonly now 38Khz transducers when fishing over 500m water depth.
In @Hayden Cs case it might be better to consider a separate sounder/transducer combo and keep the go7 as a Plotter (backup sounder)
Now a rec transducer 1Kw 50/200 will most likely set you back $1800+ ish ( I never ask prices ) for the transducer only. Despite what a salesman will tell you there is no substitute for transducer horsepower.
But you also need to know how to use your sounder and not just run everything on auto.

I am biased toward a certain brand but my own experience is mainly with commercial fishing equipment
Have a read thru these articles
https://www.furuno.com/special/en/fishfinder/index.html

Thank you Mikee

More or less what I was expecting to hear based on my limited research/knowledge. I will contact a few dealers and see what, if any, transducer upgrades exist and are compatible with the sounder or look at starting fresh.

I expect it won’t be a cheap exercise (we all know the acronym for boating!) and the minister of finance (wife) is already at her wits end with it.

My regular fishing buddy runs a 1kW Airmar sounder on his Simrad and it's pretty awesome. Clear images down to 400m at least and full image on the plane at shallower depths.

To give some idea about what I mean. Below is a screen shot of a sounder which has both a low and hi frequency transducer I think 38Khz and 200Khz @ 2KW. Into a FURUNO DFF3 Black box sounder and then into a PC running TimeZero.

The fish mark is snapper and you can clearly see the jigs going down to the fish school.
Mainly it shows the difference between what you see hi vs lo freqs on same fish school.

Slightly off your topic @Hayden C – but maybe useful to someone – also great Furuno information you provided @mikee
I put a Furuno 1650 FD sounder in a 691 Tristram back in 1999 – it was a great sounder and found me fish in deep water south of Kapiti and in shallow water off Wanganui – was even good in the BOP off Bowentown – a feature that I found useful was the highway mode when going to a GPS mark – but due to shifting to suburbia and not having shed space for a large boat – the 691 had to go.



Eight years ago, we downsized to a 581 Tristram that a Mate was selling – but had to upgrade his old dual Garmin sounder/plotter. So, based on a salesman’s advice - we installed a Garmin 751xs sounder with a Chirp transducer. Due to lack of use we never found the sounder easy to use. Recently while talking to Bay Marine Electronics, I realised that both the software and maps were seriously out of date – version 2.2. I found that Garmin will provide one free software update for each new unit – but new maps cost real money. The sounder had no software chip or map chip installed so I bought a new 32GB SD chip and took it in with the sounder to BME – they put the new software on the chip and into the sounder where it will stay – they then put the N Island map chip into a second chip slot on the sounder – one hour later and $198 for N Island maps - the job was done. Just one trip out so far and what an amazing difference it has made. Because of the old Chirp transducer, the latest software may not provide a highway mode to a waypoint. I find it difficult to trace the pink line accurately on the screen and often wander off to one side – but maybe more practice will help.
So, software and map upgrades are something we should all keep in mind – we now have software version 6.8.