Furuno 620 FF
Garmin 492 plotter
Airmar B-60 tranducer.
This is a basic package that will work well.
Want bigger screen's. It will cost more money.
Going with combo unit's is fine for a small inshore boat. But if your going to be searching the bottom you do NOT want to be jumping thru menus.
Wart said it all if you are talking serious bottom fishing. I love my Furuno 582's KNOBS.
Garmin has the best plotters. Furuno the best sounders.
Color is worth the cost, hands down.
I have been on several boats with the multifunction displays, Furuno and Garmin. Menu's suck. Split screens suck. When you want to zoom the plotter quickly you will finally realize you are zooming the sounder and have to dig through menus to change over. You change over and zoom the plotter to where you want it, then you realize you left the sounder where you didn't want it and have to dig back through the menus, all the while trying to zero in on that special small honey-hole with the big fish. Not to mention you have to keep a lookout as to where you are going while digging through the menus. Those buttons are not easy to hit in a rockin' and rollin' boat. Oh sh*t, that was the radar screen.
I have the Garmin 178C on my flats boat. Combo plotter/sounder. It's fine for that because the usage is totally different. I know where I am inshore, I just want the GPS in case one of these winter sea fogs slips in. The bottom machine is just for general purpose to let me know I'm still running in the channel and not about to hit an oyster bar. It's simple to use also. From the map page, hit the
Page Key to go to split screen, hit it again to full sounder screen. The
Quit Key takes you backwards thru the pages.
For general crusing a combo is fine. Garmin 498C would be a good choice. It's the same plotter Wart recommended but has the sounder built in.
Oh yeah, this advice is only worth $0.02
