Test Of Fishin` Buddy- A Portable Fish Finder

Empty sea or just a bad day? We have tested one of the new portable fish finders from Humminbird which makes it possible to use a fish finder on a canoe, floating-units and smaller boats that is not suitable for permanently fixed equipment. The fact that does this series some special is that the shaping and size makes it very suitable for ice fishing. Fishin`Buddy comes in four different models. The simplest has a fixed "rod", greyscale screen and a search beam only downwards. On the three other models can functions as side beam (searches sideways), telescopic rod, temperature meter, better resolution on screen and colorscreen can be selected. Compared with the basic model (110) is our test model(120) upgraded with temperaturemeter, slightly better resolution on screen and has side beam. The user manual comes in most languages, in the menues as well that makes mounting and insertion of batteries to the fish finder very easy. The mounting bracket makes it simple and quick to fasten the portable fish finder to the boats gunwale or the canoe. fishinbuddyThe only thing we missed was a dedicated attachment spot for a line in case something should losen and the whole unit sinks to the bottom. We solved this "problem" by tying a thin rope underneath the screen- maybe not elegant, but easy and ok. Even there is several possibilities to do adjustments after your own wishes the instrument functions weel right out of the box. We did the test in small lakes without any foreign bodies of any kind and with little bottom vegetation and underwater installations, and had no needs for doing any adjustments of filtering or sensetivity. The only changing we did was setting on sidebeam, fishalarm which gives a sound signal when the verticale sonar hits fish and we changed the backlighting after a while when it became darker in the evening. The setting of side searching and fish alarm is saved in the memory, while the backlighting goes back to 0 when the units is switched off and on. With use of side searching an image is displayed from both the verticale beam and the side beam on the screen simultanously.
 
Conclusion : This portable fish finder is very simple in use and it functions well. It is also fun, especially for kids to be able to "see" under water and to search to the best fishing spots. Good batterylife, but this is of course affected of temperature and use of backlight. To get as large coverage as possible we would go for one of the models with side search.
Portable Fish Finders