I've never had electronics on my boats through years of fishing & just know where I always fish at. I'm finally officially on the market for some electronics to put on the front & console.

I would like some help in the search. Is one brand more user friendly than the most? What kind of imaging/views should I be looking for. On a scale of 1-10 rank about .5 on knowledge of this stuff. If yall know of any videos that spell it out well I'll take that as well. I've watched several & walked away more confused than I began. I need a cliffs notes version.

YouTube Fish the Moment. That guy has tons of informative videos out there.

Thank you. I'll look him up.

I have a humminbird helix 7 si gen3. This unit has everything you should need to find and catch fish. The only thing that I would charge is the screen size. Put a ram mount on the console and just spin the screen around but I gotta warn you when you do that you have to have a whole lotta messed up backwards ways to figure out the side image.

I’d go with hummingbird. Best detail and bottom contour I’ve seen.

I’m running lowrance hook series front and back. I would suggest go with a big screen. I did not. I regret it. I use mine as a depth target mainly. They have all the bells and whistles but I’m too dumb to use all the features. Lol

What do you want to so with your electronics? Use the map/gps to navigate, see fish, or see structure?

Ben, I guess all of the above. I know I want to navigate a larger area & even places I've never been & fish more than the few areas I do. I've ran into a few shallow areas before & want to be a little safer. I know I want to be able to see bream beds I weren't aware of so I'm guess thats side imaging. I also want to see structure to find some hiding crappie habitat. I'm not much into chasing bass but I've got a kid who decided she wants to get into that so thats what stemming my interest.

With what you said I would get a hummingbird as their side image ing and mapping is far and away better than the othwrs, but if you can get a garmin that can do side imaging and panoptics I would do that as a gatmin panotix is a game changer for crappie fishinh

https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/garmin-echomap-plus-93sv-with-gt52-transducer-fish-finder-chartplotter-combo?ds_e=GOOGLE&ds_c=Nb%7CGeneric%7CBoating%7CDSA&gclsrc=aw.ds&&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItsKG3c-K8AIVlsSGCh0oTgZzEAAYAiAAEgL7N_D_BwE

Lmk your thoughts on this unit. I would look at getting 2 of these for now & then I could add panoptix in the future. Definitely won't be able to do live scope this year.

I have a 9" Helix at the console and a 8" helix at the front. I wish I had put a 9" Helix on the front as well. That one inch difference is a lot. But the best investment I made was a spot lock TM.