What is the best forward looking depth finder

I am looking for good forward looking depth finder that maps the under water ahead. I just replaced $3400.00 in parts from my friend hitting rock I am sure I can afford depth finder or should I say justify the cost.

Looks like hummingbird makes good ones.

Sorry guys their is enough info on this in archives. Shouldn't have posted.

Geforce, I'm interested in what you found.... post a link to the most useful discussion you found.
thanks

Geforce, sorry to hear that. I have had problems with teleflex, steer clear. Unfortunately, nothing is more effective than taking the time explore the depth of your run.

One of the places I go their is no visibility in the water to explore.

Forget the forward looking finder and get a reasonably priced one or use the one you already have to explore the depth of your run - first. Think of it this way.. Your speeding down the road and your radar detector, "detects". Your busted!

I thought you just got your boat back from the trailer incident. and now you hit some rocks??
Sounds like your having some bad luck.

Well in this case it was deep and their was a huge rock, I dont see how a forward looking depth finder wouldnt help. You can explore your run with it and have more info without having to run something over. A regular depth finder tells you what is under you. Say the water is real deep then their is a sand bar it will come up on you faster than you can react.

Well it went like this. After the boat was fixed from the accident we got a loaner trailer and went out wakeboarding. It was about a month ago. Well it wasnt a very nice day but there was a butt load of fisherman out and they werent feeling to nice that day. They were racing 2 or 3 wide and cutting very close to our boat. We were riding fairly close to the shore and they would act like we were in the middle. They would come within five feet of us or follow me while I was wakeboarding. Well my friend Roscoe got squeezed a little to close to the shore by someone and he hit a big ass rock. He wasnt even going 5 mph. Only damn place with rocks in the river too. lol. Then we turned to leave and kinda putted along at like 2pm and everyone else tried to leave at the same time. Took 2.5 hours to leave and people were rude. Just one of those days. Why was everyone leaving at 2pm? Lol

Forget the forward looking sonar.

I have an Interphase Probe forward looking on my big cruiser. It is a nice toy, and it can be useful if you are poking around looking for a distinct spot for fishing/diving. It is useless for avoiding objects if you are going at any significant speed.

The basic problem is that it takes it several seconds to make a sweep. In that several seconds, you will have moved the distance that you are looking ahead. If you are going at 20 MPH it wouldn't even have time to sound an alarm before you were on what it might have seen. At 5 MPH the alarm might sound first but it would still be too late.

If you are interested, I can give you a detailed write up on the use of such a device. I wrote this several years ago and it includes the times it takes to make a scan at several different depths and resolution.

Note that there isn't anything wrong with Interphase per se. What is wrong is that sound only travels so fast and it takes time to send a sweep of pulses out and wait for the return. A military grade unit might be able to send many pulses out and track each one independantly, but a recreational priced unit can't do that. Any scanning sonar for recreational use will have this limitation.

exactly....