[mayuan]

So, here is the deal, I’m looking for a fishfinder to do everything. The only issue is portability and compatibility. Currently don’t have a large boat for fishing, but I do have a pontoon. I will be getting a boat, but not right now. Renting the boat larger boats is what I do at this point (having a hard time justifying $30,000 on a boat). I also head out to the coast to do some salmon/halibut/ling/other fishing and the finders on the boats are cheap at best. To top it off I want to ice fish too with the finder.

The fishfinder that I’m looking at is the Lowrance HDS-5 Gen2 with the GPS and sonar. The system seems to have everything that I want and can be expanded in the future with the modules.

The finders on the boats that I use on the coast are newer Eagle finders and from what I have been seeing the Eagles might be compatible with the Lowrance plugins (Sonar & Power). Are Eagle and Lowrance different parts of the same company?

Making the Lowrance HDS-5 Gen2 compatible with ice fishing seems easy enough by using the PPP-18I Ice Pack, but this is designed for the first gen of the HDS-5. Are the two Systems compatible Gen1 and Gen2?
If the Ice Pack is compatible that should solve my portability issue, now I just need a portable transducer. Is this something that is made for this model?

Last, but not least……….. Am I a crack head and everything I want is built into a model that I can pick up off the shelf? Anyone else trying anything like this? What would people recommend for what I want to do?

Yes I know that Lowrance can answer all my questions in about two minutes, but they are going to be biased.