Spending the winter trying to catch fish through holes in the ice may not be everyone’s idea of fun. Whether you do it alone or with friends, though, ice fishing can be an amazing experience. If you want to be more successful at catching fish, though, it pays to have all the help you can get and that’s why many ice fishing enthusiasts invest in specialized equipment. You know, stuff like Garmin’s new Panoptix LiveScope Ice Fishing Bundle.
Billed as a “premium live scanning sonar for ice fishing,” the gear lets you see what’s going on beneath the ice, allowing you to see any fish or structures, so you know exactly which spots are ideal for drilling your next hole. That way, you don’t have to drill holes into a large field of ice blindly, giving you a way to optimize the amount of time you spend fishing out in the cold.
The Garmin Panoptix Livescope Ice Fishing Bundle consists of two main devices: the Livescope live scanning sonar and the ECHOMAP Plus 93sv touchscreen, both of which work hand-in-hand to give you the vital information that’s otherwise hidden away by a thick layer of ice. Designed for versatile function, it supports down scanning for real-time sonar images of what happens directly beneath the ice, as well as forward scanning for tracking schools of fish moving about in any direction up to 200 feet away. Suffice to say, you’ll get a comprehensive picture of what lies underneath all those layers of ice frozen over a body of water, allowing you to eliminate guesswork when it comes to ice fishing.
Want to see whether there any obstacles that will make catching fish difficult in the area you plan to drill a hole in? This will let you pick up that information in a jiffy. Want to see where all the fish are hanging out, so you can drill your hole in the vicinity? Absolutely. What about monitoring whether any fish are actually moving towards your bait? Yep, this lets you do just that in real-time, too.
The Garmin Panoptix Livescope Ice Fishing Bundle comes preloaded with maps and pertinent data for more than 17,000 lakes the world over, making this a very useful tool for many ice fishing destinations. Not only can you see the sonar readings and the maps individually on the bundled touchscreen display, you can also create combination pages that put the map and sonar views side-by-side, allowing you to get a clear picture of where it’s best to set up your ice fishing for the day.
The display, by the way, measures nine inches, so it’s sufficiently large for a portable panel. Granted, the 800 x 400 resolution doesn’t sound great, but for viewing map and sonar information (which is what this thing does), it’s actually more than enough. Other features include IPX7 water rating, a swivel pole mount for the transducer, and a glove-friendly carrying case, so you can stash all the gear inside a single container for easy transport.
The Garmin Panoptix Livescope Ice Fishing Bundle is slated to come out in the next couple of months. Price is $2,799.99.