When you’re selecting a new flasher, we’re sure you have questions.
Let’s dig down on answers!
Let’s tackle the big question up front.
Flashers are so-named because they feature a round, mechanical display with moving multi-colored lights. These lights indicate the location of your jig, the bottom or water depth below the transducer, and the presence of fish.
They accomplish this by emitting short sonar pulses that are reflected from the bottom and other objects. These returning signals are then translated into visual cues. While the details of the control interfaces vary from model to model, they typically feature things like a zoom and a power/depth selector, as well as some anti-interference options.
Flashers can take some getting used to if you’re accustomed to the display of your average fish finder, but once you learn to read them, they’re amazingly effective at telling you when fish are on your jig.
Like many ice fishing accessories, they’re usually designed to fit in a five-gallon bucket, allowing you to organize and tote your gear onto the ice pretty easily. They also feature big, powerful batteries that can really take the cold, and all the models we review can last for at least a few days on the ice!
They’re purpose-built for winter, meaning that they can shrug off crazy cold. That’s a huge plus, as freezing temps tend to kill batteries, and that’s simply nothing to worry about with flashers.
Those are all points in their favor, but you need to understand the limitations of flashers, too. Given that they’re customized for ice fishing, they’re a single-season piece of gear--and they’re not cheap! Go in knowing that, and you’ll handle the sticker-shock better.
Fish finders are an open water staple. Like flashers, they use sonar to locate fish, but they provide more information, more visual cues on their LCD displays, and more options. In general, they’re more complex and advanced than your average flasher. The best models use an advanced sonar system called CHIRP (Compressed High-Intensity Radiated Pulse) that starts at a low, water-penetrating frequency, emitting short ‘pings’ in gradually rising frequencies to better pinpoint fish in the water column.
Ideal for finding fish quickly in deep water, fish finders are part of the arsenal of pretty much any serious fisherman. For ice fishing, however, they’ll provide more than a bit of overkill.
That’s because they often feature extras that are useful on the open water, but really don’t add much on the ice. For instance, that powerful CHIRP sonar is necessary in 800 feet of water for onshore fishing, but over an augered hole, not so much. The exceptions are options like GPS that can be useful for locating and marking structure or snow-covered holes.
Companies like Humminbird have built their reputation on these fish finders, and rather than redesigning a high-tech digital option from the ground up, they simply add an ice-capable transducer to their existing unit, modifying the software to provide dual-modes that allow you to switch between flasher and fish finder displays.
Designed for a new breed of hard water anglers who are familiar with fish finders, these are a great idea, but we’re not sure they’re really competitive with popular flashers.
That’s because battery life is often an issue. Fans may complain that that’s not fair, but here are the facts. If you fish in the open, you’ll need to keep your screen bright enough to read, and that typically means setting the brightness to at least eight, if not all the way to ten. As a result, you’ll deplete your battery much faster than a buddy using a flasher, like it or not.
The principal advantage these units provide is all-season use. If you switch transducers, you can run your fish finder on the open water, too. Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that for ice fishing, flashers typically outperform fish finders head-to-head, especially in terms of lag.
By “lag,” we mean the time it takes for the unit to register movement, see a fish rushing toward your jig, and display that information. Flashers are “real-time;” by contrast, fish finders tend to have a slight delay given their design.
More is generally better, and we want as much as we can get. This places fish finders at a relative disadvantage, though to be fair, if a battery lasts as long as you intend to fish, enough is all the time you need!
As long as you select your gear with that in mind and know its limits, you won’t be disappointed.
This is critical when you fish outdoors. If you stay in a shanty, this won’t matter as much to you. We know these may be fighting words, but in our experience, Vexilar produces the brightest screens, and even the best fish finders aren’t even close to the worst of the flashers in bright sunlight.
Target separation describes a sonar system’s ability to differentiate two or more targets that are close to one another. The shorter a sonar ‘ping,’ the better it is at detecting individual objects like your jig and an approaching fish or two.
Target separation is usually defined in inches, and you want the smallest number you can find.
Far more important over the ice than in open water, the transducer cone angle determines the width of the area the sonar searches. The shallower the water you fish, the wider this cone needs to be in order to tell you about the fish near your jig. Too narrow a cone can even let your jig leave the sonar’s active area.
This may lead you to believe that wider is always better--but not so fast! If you fish in a shanty next to your buddies, a wide beam can create overlap and interference. That’s why many flashers offer two cone angles--a wide and a narrow--or just opt for a single split-the-difference number.
With the help of a bit of trigonometry, the area your flasher or fish finder will cover is easy to calculate. For instance, using the calculator in Windows on the ‘scientific’ function, simply use the following formula:
TAN (Cone Angle) x (Water Depth) = diameter of the cone at the bottom
If your transducer has a cone angle of 15 degrees, and you’re fishing in 20 feet of water, the calculation would be as follows:
TAN (15) x 20 = diameter
.2679 x 20 = 5.36 feet
That means that in this case, your flasher would create a cone with a diameter of 5.36 feet at the bottom of the lake. The same transducer in 10 feet of water would create a cone with a diameter of just 2.68 feet at that depth, making it abundantly clear why transducer angle matters in the shallows.
But it’s important to realize that bigger isn’t always better. When more than one transducer is nearby, overlapping cone angles can create interference. And since a lot of your time on the ice may be spent with a buddy or two, a happy medium is often ideal.
Ice angling tech is evolving quickly, and systems like the Deeper Pro+, the Humminbird Ice Helix 5, and the awesome MarCum LX-7 give us a glimpse of the future of fishing. But as incredible as each of these devices is, we’re not convinced - yet!
But whether you choose the Humminbird, MarCum, or Vexilar - we know brand loyalty matters to a lot of ice anglers - you’ll be really satisfied with the performance, rugged durability, and overall quality of your flasher.
As always we’re here to answer any questions you might have, so please leave a comment below!
Awesome article. Great info for a newbie to ice fishing
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