i finally cracked and bought a lowrance HDS unit

[jeepster]

my old sonar worked great when it wanted to, but had a few issues, it was tollerable, but a few months ago, the tweakers swiped it, with the anacortes salmon derby around the corner, i weighed the options, and said the hell with it.  i cracked and just ordered a HDS-5 nautic insight for my boat and im totally looking forward to installing it. ive played around with the display units at west marine way too much, and this definatley seems like the coolest platform ever made, ive heard nothing but good things...

what do you guys think about the HDS platform?

first step is getting a working sonar/gps unit on my boat, but i am planning on upgrading to the structurescan, i was talking to a guy who says the structurescan is the cats ass when bottom fishing. i would love hearing from others about thier experiances with these units...

[robodad]

When I was researching these last year I read that any of the scanning features (down scan, side scan, structure scan etc...) weather it be Lowrance, Humminbird, Garmin etc...are really great as long as the water is calm, after it gets bumpy they are just useless. I was going to get one with all those scanning features but elected to get the humminbird 958C and spend the extra money on map software instead. I fish mostly in the ocean where it is almost never calm !!  You should be quite happy with all the other features though !!!

[WCTaxidermy]

I have both the HDS 5 and HDS 7.  You are going to love your unit.  I bought the western states digital mapping chip as well and those units perform very well.  I have never had a problem with my structure scan in rough water.   Enjoy your new unit, you will love it......John   

[bassquatch]

I run an HDS-5 and an Hds-8 with Structure Scan and couldn't be happier! I have run Lowrance for the past 6 years. Once you get it installed take it out on the water with the manual and introduce yourself to its operation so you're ready when the season hits! They are very user friendly and you will pick it up quick. The only thing I may recommend is running an additional 5" at a later date so you can keep one on sonar and one on GPS, switching back and forth between screens is fast and easy, but when you zoom in your gps on waypoints on one half of the 5 inch screen, boat orientation can get tricky. Also you don't want to potentially miss fish on your sonar while playing with your gps on full screen. One heck of an addition to any boat though, congrats!