Nice job HUNT and same to you filet. I heard the trolling bite was awesome this weekend. Seems like everything is working well right now.I made it out this afternoon with my mom. Fished from 3:15 to 4:45 and made it in just before the rain. It was dead calm when we started and she hit a keeper on the first cast. We had our limit in 45 minutes then the wind came up and made it a challange. We ended up with 11 eyes, 8 keepers and dumped a bunch. All jigging bucktails from 32' - 43'.
Can you get the same data on a mercury with the HDS-5?
Just did a quick check and ...I think so.... but I'm not totally sure. Mercury uses another protocol called "smartcraft". You can get a device called a "mercmonitor" which uses the smartcraft protocol, but will also talk on an NMEA 2000 network. It is a smart digital guage which will give you all the engine data ... anything you can think of. Lowrance has a similar guage (LMF-400). Check the web-site. They say the Verado, Optimax and 4 strokes can use smartcraft.http://www.mercurymarine.com/gauges-and-controls/gauges-and-displays/digital/mercmonitor/I'm brand new at this, and I don't want to steer anyone in the wrong direction. If someone knows this stuff ... please help.