Deeper PRO+ Smart Sonar Castable and Portable WiFi Fish Finder with Gps for Kayaks and Boats on Shore Ice Fishing Fish Finder

The thing every shore fisherman wished for since he was a little kid trying to imagine what the bottom looked like. BE CAREFUL on casting! Don't huck it a long distance to shallows! For example don't throw it from a long distance away aiming close to the edge of an island or opposite creek bank! Eventhough you know you can put it right where you want to because you have been casting for 40 years. Think about it first! There could be shallow submerged rocks, logs, or rip-rap. Imagine my surprise when I bombed it out 40 yards towards an island, watched it hit the water then bounce off a submerged rock 10 feet into the air. It held together but never worked again after that- no electronic sensor ever could survive that abuse. Take my first day lesson learned and go on to use this mishap free for a long time for the great useful tool that it is."You pays yer money and takes yer chances," as the old saying goes. It's up to you to be careful with where you thorw it. (I went ahead and bought another one). Throw it to deeps...and then pulll it to shallows-- I gave it 4 stars because of that hard lesson eventhough it was my own dumb fault. I will fish with it for a while then post what I think of it's performance, but so far it is meeting my expectations.OK so I have used it for about a month now and have to say that it has improved my shoreline fishing game quite a bit. First, it helped me break the winter code on my local lake regarding where the fish were and what they were doing. I still have not found the big bass that are in there, but probably becasue they are holding so far out in the deeps where I cannot reach with the Deeper. But I have found that this lake is FULL of active crappie! All summer I had only caught a few small crappie by accident while I was bass fishing and had no idea that they were in there in the numbers the Deeper has revealed. It's like, hey, i'm seeing some kind of active fish on the Deeper that don't look too big and are out in the 10 foot plus depths-- what could they be? So I put together a slide bobber rig with a couple crappie jigs on it set to the depth that the Deeper showed the fish were at and caught over 30 crappie in a few hours on my 17FEB morning session. Also the Deeper showed that smaller largemouth bass would always be around these crappie schools and I caught a half dozen of them on the jigs as part of that count as well. I would just throw the deeper out and let it sit in the area the crappie schools were moving through. When the fish alarm started going off I would throw the jig out to the Deeper and excitedly wait for the bite which always would come within seconds. BTW I have my Deeper tied onto 50lb braid on a 6-6 heavy spinning rig (which I normally use for my big swimbaits) and can make 40 to 50 yard throws with it. Now I have mapped almost everywhere I can throw to, and have a good picture of the depth and structure features of my local lake. Not only did I check out the features that I knew were there by "feel" before, but I also found a couple that I didn't know were there! I have used this knowledge to my advantage, too, and caught some fish in areas that I had not thought of trying before on these new found structures. Next, it is very cool to know where the fish are and where they are not. What a satisfying feeling it is to have the Deeper mark fish, then throw lures out to them, and catch the ones you just painted on your graph! And finally the coup de grace, I caught my personal best crappie, 2lbs 9oz 16 3/4 inches! I did not have the Deeper in the water at the time but had previously used it to find this area that the crappie hang out. So in closing the Deeper has enabled me to enjoy fishing in a season during which I normally would not even throw a line in, has put me on fish, has helped me to understand what is going on in my local lake this winter, and has helped me catch a personal best. I am changing my rating to 5 stars.

Based on my research, there is no better castable sonar on the market right now (mid-2018). The ability to use 2 different frequencies, adjust sensitivity, adjust display complexity and color palette, along with all of the features included with the app are top-notch. The integration of GPS into the sonar device is unique at this time. Here are a few of my observations, after about a month of use.The good:The battery seems to last longer than advertised. After about 3.5 hrs on one day, the battery was still above 60%. This was using the high frequency sonar, with the GPS turned off (boat-mode). Based on that, I would estimate the usable life of a new unit is more like 7 or 8 hours rather than the advertised 6.I have not had any trouble connecting to the device, except as noted below. The GPS, once it establishes location after initially turning it on, can re-find itself within 5 seconds after a new cast.The ability to turn off the fish icons and adjust the sensitivity and color palette make the display very powerful, providing much more information than any of the other castable sonars I have seen.The integration of GPS is a huge benefit for being able to map out a body of water and then refer back to it later to make decisions about future fishing locations.Limitations of the design:These issues are mostly inherent to the design, but should be considered. First, the Deeper does not like rough water. One day I was hoping to map the bottom below a dam, but the river was up slightly (not flooded), and the Deeper refused to connect. While the water was choppy, the waves were not huge, and the Deeper did not appear to be submerged by each passing wave. Perhaps the antenna was just too low in the water for an effective signal. Moving above the dam to flat water, the unit worked perfectly. I would expect trouble on a windy day on any reasonably sized lake, and forget it in the ocean, unless in a protected bay. The way I see it, the only way to improve on this is to make the device bigger, which hurts castability. For small lakes and ponds under normal conditions, I expect no problems.Another issue is that while the battery life on the Deeper is good, battery life on my tablet is not. During the same 3.5 hours of use I mentioned above, my tablet battery went from ~90% to ~20%. I had the screen on the whole time with probably the brightest color palette, and was using the tablet GPS. With the screen off, I would expect the tablet battery to outlast the Deeper, but I would also guess that most cell phones don't have nearly the battery life of a tablet.I know Deeper sells a device to hold your cell phone on your fishing rod, but I would be very hesitant to use it during a cast. And I don't know of any easy solution for a larger device like a tablet. Holding the screen while reeling in is a challenge with this setup, and the risk of losing an expensive cellular device overboard is very real.The fish detection software is not great. Anything from rocks to sticks to dock posts are likely to be identified as fish, so turn that off. For me, the sonar signal is sharp enough I can usually tell the difference except for underwater trees and brush. Horizontal woody debris is tough to distinguish from fish, and I don't know if I'll ever be sure what I'm looking at around the edges of ponds with lots of deadfall trees.At this time, the app does not continue updating the bottom contours for a given body of water unless you are still scanning the same day (or maybe within 24 hours). So if you go to a pond on Tuesday and do a partial scan, and then go back on Saturday and scan the rest, you will have two history files each with a partial contour map rather than one complete map. Also, the contour interval is fairly coarse (~1m), so subtle bottom variations in shallow ponds are not visible in the map view. You can, of course, see the bottom variation if you scroll through the sonar data.Finally, the technology in this device is awesome, but there's still more information I want to know. In particular, I want to know what's happening "over there", not just what's happening "down there". While scanning straight down is very useful for many things, sideways looking sonar can do things like look in shallow water, look under docks, precisely map the location of bottom cover, etc. Maybe someday we'll get sideways looking sonar in a castable format. For now though, the Deeper Pro Plus is the best thing available.Update after 6 months of use: I have had two contacts with customer service and both were resolved satisfactorily. The first was because the internal GPS quit working on my Deeper. I sent it back to Deeper (Lithuania) and they were unable to reproduce the problem. However, they sent me a new unit anyway, which has been working ever since (~4 months). Other than the long shipping times, I was very pleased with the service. The second contact was for some feature requests to the software. I received a prompt response stating, in short, that they are already pursuing each of the things I had suggested. So the good news is, the Deeper App is only going to keep getting better with time!Finally, I would like to update one of my earlier statements. The contour spacing on the Lakebook website is much finer than 1m, so additional detail is available beyond what's visible on your smart device.I am still very happy with my purchase, and am keeping the rating at 5 stars with this update.