Humminbird Ice-35 flasher

[Micky May I]

Anyone have one of these? Do you like it? Pros and cons. Any info would be appreciated.

tight Lines Micky May I

[Quack Wacker]

I just picked up the Ice 55 and it blows by Vex away. I really enjoy it. I don't think you will be disappointed. They are really sensitive.

You can go to youtube and do a search and see the intro video.

[tommy-n]

You may want to check out iceshanty.com forums, there not getting such great reveiws.

[DaveMI]

I was helping a guy that was new to flashers with his ice-45 on Sand the other day and it looked like a nice unit but even in 24' of water it would not pick up a second jig in a hole 3' away. I swithched it between the 9 and 19 degree ducer and tried the gain all the way up and down but it would still only pick up directly underneath the iceducer.

I am not an expert on the hummingbirds so maybe there was something else that could be done.

[ih772]

Go with something that isn't a spinning wheel flasher. Get something that has many more options and less expensive like a Lowrance X67 or X68.

I have the M68C, its just a X68 with GPS.

Comparing the old spinning wheel flashers sonar to the new TFT display sonar units like the Lowrance, is like comparing a calculator (the old spinning wheel flashers) to a laptop computer (the new sonars). Both of them will add and subtract, but the laptop has a lot more options and functionality, meaning you can do more with it.
I used my Vex FL-18 for six years, but it sits at home now. I make between 50 to 70 trips out on the ice a year and I take out my Lowrance instead of my Vex. What does that tell you?

This post is a combo of 5 or 6 posts. The first part is from last winter.

Pictures here.
http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2456980&postcount=1
http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2457432&postcount=7



I've been playing with a M68C and my trusty old FL-18 side by side for the past two months. There isn't a bit of difference between the units in any real time movement of your jigs. Make sure the ping speed and chart speed are set at 100% on the M68C. Bottom line is there isn't any lag or difference between the two in real time motion!

I do notice a difference in bottom separation. When I lower my jig to the bottom and the line goes slack, the M68C shows the jig on the bottom at the precise moment the line goes slack. On the Vex, there is about a 6" zone in which it shows the jig is on the bottom but it isn't really there yet.

You can really adjust the zoom options on the M68C a lot more than the FL-18. It's nice for fishing for suspended fish like smelt. Play around with the Upper and lower limits.

You can do some fun things with it in flasher mode. For example, say I'm fishing in 9FOW. I set my lower limit to 9FOW and my upper limit to 4 FOW. This actually gives you the entire flasher dial to watch what's going on in that region of the water. This is way better resolution over the split zoom the unit has in flasher mode. You can see very tiny (about 1/8") changes in depth of your targets this way. I wasn't concerned with fish higher than 4' in the water column at the place and time I was fishing. You can even use this method with split zoom turned on and compare how much resolution you get. The units split zoom in flasher mode is 6', where using upper and lower limit you can get 5' of zoom. If you drill three holes like me with the sonar in the middle, it will also show if fish are in the hole to your left or in the hole to your right depending on which side of the screen they show up on if you set it up like I just said. Ok, that last sentence was a complete dramatization of course.


You can also do the same thing with it in the "Full sonar chart" soft water mode. Zoom in to 4X and you will see from the bottom to 18" off the bottom, spread out on the entire vertical part of the screen. That really shows the bottom hugging fish and if they are slightly moving toward or away from your jig depending on the presentation. So what you basically get this way is zooming in on the bottom 5' with the upper and lower limits set at 9' and 4' respectively. At 2x zoom in you get the bottom 2 1/2' and at 4x you get the bottom 18" of water. It does beat out the FL-18 by far in zoom resolution.


You can fish with both units right next to each other. I set the noise reduction to LOW on the M68C and they both played very well together.

Having the GPS and sonar in one unit is nice. I just set the unit under the windshield on my snowmobile and follow the map out to my waypoints. Now I don't have to keep pulling out my smaller handheld GPS and try and look at it while trying to get to my waypoint in the dark.

I'm still playing with both of them side by side to see what one can do better over the other. I know the FL-18 inside and out as I've fished with it for 5 years now.

When people say its like comparing Ford to Chevy to Dodge, its really not accurate. Its more like comparing a truck to a car to a three wheeler. All of them have wheels, but thats really where the similarity ends.

Most people that recommend one brand over the other have never used another brand in a side by side comparison test. They say things like "Brand Z hands down" when they don't have anything to compare it too. A black and white TV looks good if thats all you've even seen.

Spinning wheel flashers are very limited in the amount they can be tweaked, so your not always getting the best representation of whats happening below you, that you could have had if you used a unit like the X67 etc.

The size of the letters and depth numbers can be adjusted on the LCD units to be rather large and easy to read from a few feet away.

The interference rejection is superior to the spinning wheel flashers units, which is a big plus when fishing for smelt and there are a lot of guys using sonar near you. My spinning wheel flasher is useless when fishing in smeltville on Higgins Lake, My Lowrance gets rid of the interference without any problem.

When you use it in graph mode you can look back a few seconds in time to see what happened while you looked away to take a drink of pop or whatever. You can't do that with a spinning wheel flasher.

The resolution is much better on the Lowrance units than it is on the spinning wheel flashers.

The Zoom feature has much more resolution than any of the spinning wheel flasher units. That is especially helpful when fish are tight to the bottom or when smelt fishing.

Some guys say there is a "lag" in the Lowrance units, but there isn't. The guys that say that are the same people that don't put their units into "ice fishing" mode. They are either too lazy to read the manual or their reading comprehension is at the level of "See spot run".

Some other guys just keep saying their flasher units are better because they don't want to admit that they paid a lot more money for a sonar unit that does a lot less than something less expensive like an X67. They really just paid for a name and not a better product. I did the same thing too a few years ago, but didn't allow my ego to keep me from making a better choice when it presented itself. I found the Lowrance M68C's on sale last year.

Its because of new technology (microprocessors) the Lowrance and other new LCD graph flashers can do so much more than the spinning wheel flashers.

Say you're fishing in in 24 FOW. You can set the upper and lower depth limits to customize it for 24 FOW. In the spinning wheel flashers, you're stuck with what ever settings are set by the depth knob.

I use the custom depth settings a lot, especially when fishing in less than 10 feet of water. Doing this also allows you to zoom in even more for better separation of underwater targets...fish, you're lure etc.

Zoom is very important to really understand the fish's mood and how its reacting when its close to your lure, especially on those slow bite days. With zoom you can separate the fish's echo from your lure's echo. Without zoom its just becomes one blob and you can't tell what the fish is doing until it falls about a foot away from your lure, then its usually too late to entice a bite.

The zoom feature on the Lowrance zooms in to a much larger degree than the spinning wheel flashers. In one of my favorite fishing spots I'm only in 7 FOW when I set my Lowrance to maximum zoom the entire screen represents 18" of water. That really lets you separate targets. You can customize the zoom for any depth in the water column that you wish and you can set it up to zoom in on as much or as little of that water column.

Let's see you Marcum and Vex guys zoom in on a spot in the water column to 2 1/2' or 18". Grin

The old flashers (Vex, Marcum, etc.) were the best companies had to offer back in the day, but flintlock muzzleloaders were the best in their day too.

[tommy-n]

or just go with the flasher marcum or vexilar, there something to be said for simplicity;) I love the way I can flop 5 fish on the ice while others are playing with there menu's and pages and they look up and there eyes are spinning about as fast as my dial on the vexilar:lol::lol: