Garmin Panoptics and The PS30

Garmin Panoptics and the PS30 transducer has made a world of difference for our fishing success aboard Ace Charters. Finishing up our third successful season usng it, it has become an invaluable tool adding to our charter fishing success.

The Hot Set-up

We married the transom mounted PS30 transducer to a Garmin 8610 xsv chartplotter/fishfinder and couldn’t be happier! Its as simple to hook up as plug and play. The chartplotter screen is completely daylight visible from all areas of the boat that are in view. The 10″ screen is large enough for our needs, but be advised Garmin offers larger screen sizes as well.

Real Time Live Action Sonar

You would not believe the real time live action view of both your downriggers and fish that come into the spread. The real time information on the screen provides many beneifits towards a successful outing! First and foremost, you see real fish in real time coming into your spread. You’d be surprised how many come in on any given day and don’t bite! At times it can be most frustrating,but can and should be used to your advantage. We typically change out items when many of the fish turn their noses up at them and keep doing so till they bite!

Trolling Direction

Again in real time, one can see both the rigger weights and many times the attractors or spoons behind them. It depends on set-back, but most times we can see back 15-20ft behind the rigger weights. The key is to get the attractors and rigger weights to align vertically on the screen. In this case, crabbing at depth is virtually eliminated! Crabbing is not as bad when trolling spoons but, can be detrimental to a good flasher fly or attractor meat program. Our success rates definately go up when we eliminate the crabbing!

Entertainment Value

Garmin Panoptics and the PS30 transducer are very engaging with our clients. It’s quite fascinating to watch fish come into the spread and then turn around to immediately watch the rigger go off!  Often times you will here the whole crew cheering on the fish to bite. It’s fun to do and its fun when they bite!