SHREVEPORT, LA–In front of a couple hundred members of the angling press today, Humminbird unveiled it’s new product and it’s exciting. The new 360 Imaging until allows anglers to view a full 360 degrees around the boat and, yes, that means you can see what’s ahead of you!
It’s hard to state what kind of impact this can have for anglers, particularly those who fish bass. In a very real sense, this unit is similar to Humminbird handing you a pair X-Ray glasses that allow to to see exactly what’s under the water — trees, bridge pilings, old road beds, grass and even fish.
The fact that the unit can view in front of the boat is key as you don’t have to run over the fish to see them on sonar. Many anglers like the mapping feature available on top sonar unit today as they offer a similar opportunity, but even the best units are not always 100 percent accurate and even when they are, they don’t show key cover like boulders or grass.
The Humminbird 360 Imaging is not a sonar unit. It’s essentially a transducers on steroids. When mounted on the back of the boat it looks much like a Power Pole, that is deployed electronically to lower the transducer below outboard’s lower unit for an unrestricted 360 degree view around the boat.
It wasn’t covered in the press conference today, but clearly the until can be used only at slow boat speeds and anglers must be careful not to destroy the unit by grounding it in shallow water.
The images offered by the unit were impressive, and Kevin VanDam, who ran the unit himself a couple days ago assured the audience the unit blew him away with the information it provides.
The unit requires an Ethernet-equipped Side Imaging Humminbird fish finder (sold separately).
For more information visit Humminbird.com/360imaging. Cool stuff.–Steve
