Not everyone is thinking about ice and snow in the middle of July, and fewer yet find themselves building out their ice fishing arsenal some four months before that first skim ice of the season might be spotted on an isolated, tucked-away pond. But rest assured that while your mind and body may be on a tropical beach right now, Garmin is hard at work with new gear to help you see more of what’s going on below the water, both open and frozen.
Unveiled at this year’s ICAST, the LiveScope™ Ice Fishing Bundle LI combines a chartplotter and transducer bundle with revolutionary Panoptix LiveScope sonar powered by a lightweight lithium battery to produce a lighter, more powerful package than ever before. “Garmin was the first to deliver live-scanning sonar technology to ice anglers, transforming the way they pinpoint and follow schools of fish below the ice,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin vice president of worldwide sales. “Now with a lithium battery, powering your LiveScope has never been easier. It’s lighter to carry around from hole to hole and it’ll keep you out fishing longer than ever before.”
Where traditional sounders used on the ice only provided the angler with a single image of what was directly below their hole, the all-new LiveScope Ice Fishing Bundle LI features two modes in one transducer—LiveScope Forward and LiveScope Down—so anglers can now see fish and structure in real time, up to 200 feet in any direction! The transducer is easily adjusted making it simple to locate an approaching school of bait or gamefish as it moves in on your spread, or to get on a bite when hunting roaming fish on large expanses of frozen water. When fish settle in below the angler, the built-in flasher provides a view of jigs and fish as they swim into the beam.
The LiveScope Ice Fishing Bundle LI includes a large ECHOMAP™ UHD 93sv touchscreen combo with keyed assist, the Panoptix LiveScope System with forward- and down-scanning modes, a swivel pole mount for the transducer, plus the rechargeable lithium battery, battery charger and LiveScope transducer cable that stays flexible in the cold—all in a convenient, glove-friendly portable bag. Hardwater anglers literally have everything they need to find the fish in a single lightweight, convenient, easy-to-use package.
While all anglers have their favorite home waters that they know like the back of their hand, exploring new territory can be both extremely exciting and rewarding. However, knowing exactly where to set up a spread of traps or jigging holes can be daunting on unfamiliar turf. Preloaded with Garmin’s latest and most detail-rich LakeVü g3 maps that blend the best of both Garmin and Navionics® premium content together, the ECHOMAP UHD 93sv includes more than 18,000 lakes with up to 1-foot fishing contours that provide a more accurate depiction of bottom structure for improved fishing charts and enhanced detail. Eliminate the guesswork, drill fewer prospect holes and eliminate nearly all the guesswork out of pinpointing prime fish-holding terrain, even if you’ve never fished a given lake before.
The LiveScope Ice Fishing Bundle LI is more than a one-trick pony as Garmin knows that most ice anglers also spend a good amount of time each year fishing in open water, so they made it easy to transfer from one season to the next with the same unit, settings and waypoints with the LiveScope Boat Kit. The kit includes a trolling motor mount and the necessary power and network cables to take advantage of LiveScope technology year-round. Garmin also added the LiveScope LVS32-IF ice fishing transducer with LiveScope Down and LiveScope Forward modes and the new STRIKER™ Vivid 5cv Ice Fishing Bundle to its ice fishing arsenal, which offers bundles that include an affordable STRIKER Plus 4 to the premium 9-inch ECHOMAP UHD.
The LiveScope Ice Fishing Bundle LI is expected to hit the shelves of your local authorized Garmin dealer by this September, allowing for plenty of time to get yourself set up and familiarized with this awesome new piece of hardwater technology before you drill your first holes of the season.
In the meantime, be sure to place your vote TODAY for the LiveScope Ice Fishing Bundle LI in the ICAST 2021 New Product Showcase brought to you by Fishing Tackle Retailer. You can check it out in person in the New Product Showcase, as well as at the Garmin ICAST booth, #5127.