Speed reader

[fishon2020]

Afternoon gents.

Just bought a new boat and need a speedometer for trolling. Only products I know is fish hawk and don't really want to spend 500 bucks. Anyone know a website or product that has just speed. Any help would be great.

Thanks

[SeaCatMich]

The "big" three for trolling speed are FishHawk, Depth Raider, and SubTroll. Actually yhe current low price FishHawk (X4) is going to be closer to $600. The Depth Raider and SubTroll are available for around $450. All do a good job and are worth the cost as without knowing how fast the lures are running relative to underwater currents it is much more difficult to reproduce a presentation and catch fish.

If that's too much then I would start watching Craigslist and the for sale areas on GLF and GLA for a used model. Quite a few tackle shops will have a resale/consignment area where you might find one too.

You can use your GPS's speed over ground (SOG) along with watching the direction you are trolling and the angles of your downrigger wires and/or diver rod bends to get a pretty good approximation to be able to reproduce a good speed once you catch a fish. Not as easy as the electronics but before the FH, DR, and ST units existed that's how it was done -- with a fishfinder paddle wheel for speed instead of GPS.

.

[fishon2020]

Thanks Ryan I will look into that. I usually look at the dypys this year but really need one

[slickwater]

Are you wanting down speed or speed of your boat?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G730A using Great Lakes Fisherman mobile app

[fishon2020]

either one. i just need to know how fast im going to get an idea. would prefer down speed though

[slickwater]

I have a depth raider and it works great and it's a little cheaper than the fish hawk. But I used just gps speed for years with great success. But the fishfinder speed wheels I don't like because they never give the right speed.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G730A using Great Lakes Fisherman mobile app

[Fowlpursuit]

Any gps or speec on your fish finder outa do the trick. I always used the arc of my dipsy rods to identify down speed. I never found a real value in the speed readout once I did get a down speed/temp. The huge value I found was the tempeture read out... That was huge in our success. It alowed us to stay away from the crowds catch ALOT more fish and show our catch off at weigh in. Temp is the #1 variable in locating kings. If forced to choose between a graph and a down Speed/temp is choose the down speed/temp Everytime

[1mainiac]

Fish Hawk is giving a complete X4 unit for big fish of the year in our tourney series if I win it my Depth Raider will likely be for sale or you could come and join in the tourney and try and win it yourself. 3 more to go this year and big fish are going to show up soon. We fish out of Muskegon and is DNR 3 man rules start at 6 am in front of pier heads and weigh in at 1pm Grand Trunk boat launch. lots of cool sponsor prizes a chance to win some cash and maybe get a Fish Hawk as well. Worst you can do is spend the day fishing entry is 40 bucks per plus a one time 10 dollar captains fee to join the group. Oh and even if you can't catch a fish we have a second chance drawing for 100 bucks cash every event.

[Mega Byte]

Check ebay. A couple of used SubTrolls sold for $250 within the last month or so.