Garmin striker 4

[SailingLoto]

i was looking for just a round depth finder for my boat, and came across the Garmin Striker 4 on sale for $100. Has anyone tried one? I lake sail only and really only need to know depth, but the added features of water temp and GPS seem like they could come in handy. Obviously the ability to find fish is not a huge concern.

Any thoughts or experience with this unit? thanks in advance. Cale

 

[Tally Ho]

I don’t have that unit, but I have a Garmin chart plotter on my boat, and use it for depth, speed, water temp. It works great. On your boat, it would seem to be perfect. And it has a transom mount so you don’t have to put any big holes in the bottom of the boat. you could also mount the transducer inside the hull (in some sort of fluid), but you would loose water temp I would imagine.

I assume you have a power source on your boat...?

Greg

 

[Justin_NSA]

My only issue with a transom mounted xducer on my Mac was it had to be mounted off center, so every time we healed it was out of the water. If you can, mount it inside the hull like Greg suggests. You can jam it into toilet ring wax too.

 

[capta]

I don’t have that unit, but I have a Garmin chart plotter on my boat, and use it for depth, speed, water temp. It works great. On your boat, it would seem to be perfect. And it has a transom mount so you don’t have to put any big holes in the bottom of the boat. you could also mount the transducer inside the hull (in some sort of fluid), but you would loose water temp I would imagine.

I assume you have a power source on your boat...?

Greg

So, your depth finder only tells you the depth of what you've already hit? When I had to move a 73' St Augustine shrimper from Jax to Marco Island via the ICW and Lake Okeechobee, we literally nailed one of those transducers to the stem, just under the water. Worked well enough except the water level in the lake was so low we did about 4 miles with the keel grinding through the shell.

 

[Sanfelice]

I use a striker 4 on my boat. You can install it by placing it inside the hull and using silicone to keep it in place. You can find a good placement area by putting it in a plastic bag with water and see where it picks up the depth. Google and you can find other methods of ways to determine placement. It will give you depth, speed, etc.. One issue is that if it has a pre loaded chart it needs to have the one for inland lakes. The cheapest ones have a mapping feature which you read about. If it is $100 new then I suspect there is no chart included. Just read the details of the model you want to use. All in all I am very happy with it.