Garmin Striker 7sv

[tracy willis]

im looking at buying one of these units strictly for the side imaging function. do any of you guys know of anyone that has one of these units or has one of the other 7" units from some of the other manufacturers. what i am looking for is to locate bigger bluegill bedding in deeper water and probably scanning no more than 30ft side to side. my worry is that with a 7 inch screen the resolution is going to be lacking in detail enough to see fanned beds.

thanks
Tracy

[Leo Nguyen]

Side Imaging belongs to the two primary manufacturing companies, such as Humminbird and Lowrance, that's heavily supported by both the programming community, and enthusiasts. Both companies created the backbone OSes on their fishfinders for such customization purposes. Other companies, not so much.

Of course, be ready to shell out tons of money for SI tech and additional bells and whistles. Tech like this is purely for pleasure more than functionality. I have the 1st gen of SI before they called it SI. I rather focus on my money on DI (Down Imaging) on a larger screen to see what's below me, and a second unit for front-rear relay over the SI.

[B. Waldman]

Don't have that unit but have heard good things about it. I don't believe you'd have any problem accomplishing what you want to do. Before upgrading, I ran a H'bird 798SI unit and could clearly see bluegill beds with it.

-T9

[tracy willis]

yeah i have a lowrance elite 4 for 2d sonar and high speed depth reading(keeps my prop looking new on KY lake where you could suddenly go from 50ft to 2ft lol). see my wife bought me this bass tracker 175 last year and i should have upgraded to a better unit but im cheap. so she is going to buy me another for our anniversary and of course i dont want to spend a few thousand for a lowrance or hummingbird with the 11 or 12 inch screen. garmin introduced this unit as an entry level SI unit for cheapskates like me. some of the reviews ive read said that they took their lowrance elite 7 total scan back and liked this unit better as it had a little better resolution.

thanks for the reply on seeing the gill beds with small screen. i think im gonna go for it and see how it turns out and maybe get some screen shots and post them for you guys. this unit is only $499 so we will see if it is a good bang for the buck.

tracy

[Leo Nguyen]

This unit is definitely a starter unit for us cheapy. But truly be warned, since it's 1st gen on the unit, there's not much support for the unit out there. The others already have their fair shares of tinkering and hammering out the bugs, with tons of add-ons from the inputs that the communities had discussed about.

Weakness:

1. No memory card removal for customization.

2. This is a single mount. There's no dual mounting, allowing two units to talk to each other to provide front-back relay info.

3. Unable to update of OS..this worries me. If there are glitches..hmm..

4. Nothing indicating onboard memory size. This worries me even more. What's the capacity of holding the waypoints? How much? CHIRP tech, which version? CHIRP doesn't mean much if there's no version to it. You can have CHIRP version 1, which has a huge GPS gap hole and the ill-ability to get accurate GPS signals.

The info on the radar is sorely lacking that it scares me as a tech freak.

[carl hendrix]

OK;; QUESTION FOR YOU LEO;; A ;; WHAT IF ??   WHAT IF;;  YOU HAD A GRAY SCALE DEPTH/ FISH FINDER;; MOUNTED IT ON TO A PVC PIPE;; MADE THE ELECTRICAL CONNECTIONS;; AND DIPPED THE SONAR; INTO  BRUSH PILES; BOAT DOCKS; THING LIKE THAT;; AND; AS WELL AS;; FIX IT TIGHT TO THE PVC PIPE;; TO TRY TO DO A SIDE SCAN !! THINK ITS POSSIBLE ??

[Leo Nguyen]

You're talking my DIY Hack language. Of course, that throws everything off, unless you can compensate the information on the fly. Here's why:

1. Sonar is 1-to-3 dept to angle dispersement, at 22° to 37° angle from high to low power setting. Side Imaging is designed with a 100° to 122° degree to the side, static detection, to maintain a proper side angle.

2. Sonar keeps on spreading the further it goes out. So, at 100ft from shore, the sonar goes from below water to above water, sending back false signal. This will drive anyone crazy, since you have to keep an eye out for the down sonar, and the side sonar. Even I don't have that capacity to compute that much info back at the same time, wondering what depths the fishes are to the side, and the one below me, since we have to take account for the depth changes between the transducer below water relative to the mounting location (which is normally +/- 1ft). But the medium the transducer has to punch through, either be water, hull, glue, or air, it can cause all kind of anomalies.

Yeah..I talk geek languages.

[carl hendrix]

OH HOW WELL I KNOW YOU KNOW HOW TO SPEAK GEEK ; LEO;; IM STILL TRYING TO TEACH YOU TO TALK-- SOUTHERN REDNECK !! LOL  BUT;; STILL QUESTION ARISES ON MAKING IT DO A SIDE SCAN;; AT CLOSE RANGE;; TO SAY; A BANK SIDE;; WITH BRUSH PILES ;; WOULDNT IT STILL BE ABLE TO SHOW POSSIBLE FISH IN THE BRUSH PILE ??  DISTANCE BEING; POSSIBLY 20 TO 40 FEET TO THE BANK ??

[Leo Nguyen]

Redneck style:

Y'all can do it. Ain't looking pretty, but it might. 50-50 chance finding 'em fishes in the weeds, if y'all not moving one bit, and the fishes are. But, any moving piece of wood, or if the boat moves, even a rock may appear to be a fish. Weeds will show up like balls of baitfish since the sonar don't scan it vertical to see. The brain in the fishfinder things it's a long body fish rather than a weed/reed (scanning downwards). Scanner is that stupid y'all.

[carl hendrix]

I;LL GIVE YA A ( E ) FOR EFFORT;; YA;LL GETTING THERE; NOT QUITE THERE YET THO;; HAHAHAHAHAHAHA  LEO;; OUR MOST WONDERFUL; MARVELOUS; MASTER; MANIPULATOR; OF THE ELECTRONIC KEYBOARD;; HAVING BEEN ASSIMILATED BY A MASTER BANK OF NASA;S IBM MACHINES;; MORE CYBORG;; THAN HUMAN !!  EVEN BILL GATES;; HAS LEO;S PHONE NUMBER;; ON SPEED DIAL !!   DONT KNOW A LOT ABOUT CHECKERS LEO;; BUT I THINK ITS YOUR MOVE NOW;; HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[tracy willis]

a little update to this thread. i went ahead and bought the 7sv last year and it turned out to be a very nice unit. mine came with the GT52 transducer but with the Navico lawsuit they changed the transducer element on the downview piezo. they won the final lawsuit so they should be back to packaging the better transducer soon in the US.

i am able to scan bluegill beds and can actually see fish on the beds(shows up as a white dot). the downview is great for crappie fishing along with the 2d chirp. the chirp is a lot clearer than my lowrance non chirp. i ended up paying about $450 on sale.

anyway like Leo stated, their is no update function but so far it does what i want it too. as far as memory, it holds all of your settings and several thousand way points. there was some guy writing reviews to the contrary on several interweb sites and he is just plain wrong. makes me wonder if he even bought the unit or had a defective unit.

[Leo Nguyen]

Tracy, great to see you're getting the great use out of the 7SV model. It's a very powerful unit if you can play with the various fine tuning functions. Most people only use the defaults, rather than maximizing the usages of all the function combinations.

There are tons of reviews out there, and you have to take all those reviews with a bottle of salt. Don't rely on those who merely used them a few times for the sake of reviews. Rely on those who went deep into the unit itself for extended usages. Good luck in playing around with it. Make sure to report back more on the unit's results as you go along. Take photos of the unit in actions over the fishes, and the results you get from the on-the-fly scan.

[tracy willis]

yes, to get the most out of any unit you have to play with the different settings. lol, i find myself enjoying scanning as much as i do fishing. for this particular unit ive found that contrast and brightness controls have the biggest effect on scans. i like the 455khz signal for general scanning and the 800khz for grass beds and getting a better look at cover. the fish returns seem to pop out more on 455khz with the contrast turned up a bit and the brightness adjusted accordingly. on these 7" screens i keep my scans to 60 ft max and when i see something i want to look at closer i will scan it with right or left side scan only. by doing this the target area will fill the entire screen and if im scanning shallow bank areas i will keep it on left or right side scan. here are a couple of pics i took a while back albeit with an iphone.

the first scan pic was taken under Birdsong bridge. you can see the squareness of the bridge pilons and the white rock coming into the water. these fish were on a feeding frenzy because of the thousands of barn swallows nesting under the bridge. these were more than likely LMB. the next 2 pics were take over stumps where i usially catch crappie and you can see by the common stacked fish returns that these are more than likely suspended crappie.