Having a fish finder on your boat can definitely up your fishing game. At worst, you will at least be able to see all the fish you can’t catch! I know it’s cold comfort being able to see them and not catch them, but at least you know they are available to catch when you get the formula right. Most people, if they install just one fish fisher on their boat, install it in front of the drivers seat. The obvious reason is so you can see it while you are driving the boat. However, there are some special benefits of having a second bow mounted fish finder on your boat.
Convenience
The first benefit of having a second bow mounted fish finder is convenience. If you fish with a friend like I often do, you are both seeing similar information such as water depth and water temperatures. It is equally as convenient when you are fishing alone. You don’t have to keep turning around or walking to the back of the boat to check your information. My Lowrance 4x is conveniently located at my feet beside the trolling motor foot controls. I can quickly glance down for water depths when pushing into shallow water. This is especially helpful during the spawn and prespawn when you push into shallow water searching for the biggin’s.
Coverage
The second benefit of having a bow mounted fish finder is coverage. With a trolling motor transducer on the front unit, you are typically picking up fish in front of the boat with the downscan cone. When you add this coverage to the downscan from the rear unit, you are covering almost twice the area under the boat. The rear unit typically picks up fish behind the boat in it’s cone and the combined units can give both anglers in the boat a longer field of view on fish, bottom structure, or cover.
Creativity
The final benefit of a bow mounted unit is creativity. It can give you the opportunity to experiment with a few specific techniques like a Ned rig, or a drop shot rig. Even some of the base units like the Lowrance 4x have good enough technology that you can see your bait on the screen as you drop into a school of fish and you can learn to “video game” fish.
A front unit is not very difficult to install yourself if you’re into DIY projects. In this video, I show you how I installed the bow mount unit on my boat. You can pick up a smaller unit fairly cheap these days as you can see fro the links below. Let us know how your use your front unit in the comments below. Good luck to you next time you get out fishing!
- Check out the Lowrance HOOK² 4x for a good bow mounted fish finder.
- Check out the Lowrance HOOK² 7x TS for a good console mounted fish finder
