Old School flasher- not too bad

[Fatherof3]

I'm one of those poor unfortunate souls without a Vexilar. Been thinking about buying one but can't quite justify one yet. I've seen a buddy use one and heard so much on positive feedback this board I had to break out the old flasher. I went and got my Dad's old Eagle Silenty Sixty Portable and took her for a little reunion outing. We got it for my Dad (who really doesn't ice fish at all) for xmas back in 1988. Its probably seen about 10 hours of use over 19 years, moslty by myself borrowing it. But I never really got the hang of reading it nor did I even trust it back then. Tonight was different. After monkeying with the sensitivity and suppression for about 15 minutes I was finally able to mark my tiny waxie/teardrop very faintly. It would disappear when holding still but if I gave it a little action it would show up. That worked out to my advantage because when I got a nice strong signal I knew there was a fish checking it out, then boom a bite. I hooked up with a nice little pile of gills in about 45 minutes. My confidence in the old flasher soared. This unit is definitely not as accurate as a vex because 10 ft is at about 2:00 position on the dial, on the vex its around 4:00 or 5:00, a big difference in accuracy. I was only working in 7 ft. of water. Maybe in 16 feet I won't be able to see my lure, but in 7 feet I was real happy with how the unit performed. Let me stress however that this experience makes me want the Vexilar even more. Its comforting know I can scrape by with the old Eagle, but the Vex would really be a shot in the arm.

[GoneFishin]

Heck before all these fancy gadgets came along, we used to use an old Lowrance "Green Box" hooked to a lawn mower or motorcycle battery for fishin' deep water perch and bluegills on some inland lakes. Couldn't see the small jigs in deep water but knew how many inches of line one turn of the reel brought in and bumped bottom everytime we dropped the bait in or marked the line. Even went as far as making some weights out of 8" 0f 1/8"bronze welding rod and soldering a 1" dia reflector on it so we could see where we were at all times.

Still have the old "Box" somewhere, but have used the Vex FL-8 for about the past 9 or 10 years, it's awhole lot easier..

[gman]

I picked up a super 60 off ebay last year. I'm still getting the hang of it, I can get it to mark bottom but still have to figure out how to fine tune it to mark my jig. I only used it on the Saginaw River last year so I hoping that my jig was too far downstream to get a reading on it was most of my problem.

[Burksee]

After wanting one for over twenty years I finally got one last year! It's not a Vex but its serving the purpose and gets a lot of attention and comments.
I was using my 12 volt "Jump Box" to power it, but just picked up a rechargeable 12V from Gander Mountain for $14.99! ($29.99 at BPS! :sad: ) Its just a tad to wide to put in place of the two "lantern" batteries that was used to originally power it. I've even gone to far as to buy a couple more on Ebay for parts and what not. Thought I'd become the "Little Green Box" guy! Anyone who has expierance with one, still uses one, has parts, selling or wants one please PM me! I'm still trying to get the adjustments down, dont know if I'm doing it right or not? The two I'm using are different, one has a white face and one adjustment knob, the other is a "300-D" and has two knobs and a little light in the upper left. Low battery indicator? Anyone with comments or suggestions please advise!

[Fatherof3]

GMan
I was using a tiny teardrop w/waxie, so I figure a walleye jig would surely mark. I had the suppression set at about 9:00, and my sensitivity at 12:00 to 1:00. Water depth may change that, but the lake I was at only gets 8 ft deep. It seems to me that little/no suppression would be more sensitive, but I had my best luck with a little noise supression.

[P Gottshall]

I used a Humminbird Super-60 before I bought my Vex. It worked very well, even though single-color.

The trick was hanging the transducer straight. Here's how I did it.

Paul

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/pgottshall/TransducerFloatRig.jpg

[martin1950]

Went out Saturday morn with a friend(?) just north of Hartford. He has a Vex-8, I have an old Lowrance Lo-K-Tor and another guy had a Hummingbird. It was funny to see that they all worked pretty much to same. We all marked the bottom at 10', 8', 6', 4', all in the same hole,the bottom kept changing. The changes where due to large schools of shiners swimming thru. It got kind of funny after awhile because we could tell which way the schools were going. A real poor day for specks, but it was a great day to be outside.