Fishin' Buddy 120 (Portable Fish/Depth Finder)

[saint romain]

Anything good about this? Its 169.99 at BPS (cheapest I can find) and has a down and side sonar beam. Has a clamp like a transom trolling motor (I would assume it to be close). Runs off of 6 AA batteries.

Anyone have this? If so, how do you like it?

[Fishes in trees]

Back in the day, when I was fishing out of borrowed and rental boats alot, I had one of these.  Hummingbird makes them now, Bottom Line made them then.  I found it easy to use and I loved the water temp feature on it.  I never had much use for the side finder feature.  I knew a couple of other guys who had one and they had some success locating schools of minnows in open water.

The only issue I had with mine was it was a battery eater.  I never could get two trips out of one set of batteries, they would always fail in the middle of the second trip.  Taking the batteries out of the unit between trips seemed to help some, but I just got into the habit of getting batteries when I stopped for beer & gas on the way fishing.

[Okiefalcon]

I have the 110 and love it. I can even put in on my float tube. The battery life is excellent. I can use it 8-10 trips without ever changing batteries. Great for the two man boat also.  I highly recommend it!!

[deep]

I have one of these (120) on my kayak.

This is my first depthfinder, so I can't compare it with anything. The sidefinder is not very useful. It marks "fishes" and gives a distance to each target. You can sidescan through 360 degrees, but it does nothing more than mark "fishes" .

The downwards sonar marks structures, and of course give depth readings. It does that pretty well I should say for its price. I found weedbeds 25+ ft deep and caught bass too. It also marks "fishes", and displays surface temperature.

One problem is that in a good area, it marks too many fishes, so I turn that feature off or turn the filter on. But the depth of the fishes was accurate. I caught a couple of suspended bass with cranks.

The battery life is okay I should say. Turn the backlight feature off unless its dark and you should be good.

The only thing I didn't like about it was the clamp. Didn't fit my kayak. One trip to the Walmart to buy some screws, screwdrivers, and a drill fixed that.

[saint romain]

I've never used a depth finder, ever. So, pretty much I have many questions but I'll keep it simple as possible. Seems like the one sonar down basically does all the work, so it only tells you drop offs, structure, and stuff like that directly under you?

Is it worth the extra 60$ for the 120?

[deep]

saint romain, not only "directly" under you, but in an "area" under you (the sound waves are emitted in a cone) and the area you already passed over.

I chose the 120 over the 110 because I could afford to spend the extra 30 bucks (got my FF in a cabelas sale). However I didn't go for the 130 or 140 as I didn't think an extendable shaft or a color screen was worth spending the extra cash on. While the sidescanner hasn't been much helpful so far, who knows, I might find some baitfish pods one day. Plus, if you see a bunch of fish say 40 feet ahead, you might want to go there and search for structures with the down-looking sonar. Thus the sidescanner is useful, although indirectly.

"If I were you", I'd take the 120 over the 110 if I could. My 2 cents.

[SCangler91]

I got one and the transducer didn't work.  The clamp didn't hold it tight on our jon boat, and it wobbled wildly with the trolling motor on.  If your using it for a kayak or inflatable it may fair better.