The thing every shore fisherman wished for since he was a little kid trying to imagine what the bottom looked like. BE CAREFUL on casting! Don't huck it a long distance to shallows! For example don't throw it from a long distance away aiming close to the edge of an island or opposite creek bank! Eventhough you know you can put it right where you want to because you have been casting for 40 years. Think about it first! There could be shallow submerged rocks, logs, or rip-rap. Imagine my surprise when I bombed it out 40 yards towards an island, watched it hit the water then bounce off a submerged rock 10 feet into the air. It held together but never worked again after that- no electronic sensor ever could survive that abuse. Take my first day lesson learned and go on to use this mishap free for a long time for the great useful tool that it is."You pays yer money and takes yer chances," as the old saying goes. It's up to you to be careful with where you thorw it. (I went ahead and bought another one). Throw it to deeps...and then pulll it to shallows-- I gave it 4 stars because of that hard lesson eventhough it was my own dumb fault. I will fish with it for a while then post what I think of it's performance, but so far it is meeting my expectations.
OK so I have used it for about a month now and have to say that it has improved my shoreline fishing game quite a bit. First, it helped me break the winter code on my local lake regarding where the fish were and what they were doing. I still have not found the big bass that are in there, but probably becasue they are holding so far out in the deeps where I cannot reach with the Deeper. But I have found that this lake is FULL of active crappie! All summer I had only caught a few small crappie by accident while I was bass fishing and had no idea that they were in there in the numbers the Deeper has revealed. It's like, hey, i'm seeing some kind of active fish on the Deeper that don't look too big and are out in the 10 foot plus depths-- what could they be? So I put together a slide bobber rig with a couple crappie jigs on it set to the depth that the Deeper showed the fish were at and caught over 30 crappie in a few hours on my 17FEB morning session. Also the Deeper showed that smaller largemouth bass would always be around these crappie schools and I caught a half dozen of them on the jigs as part of that count as well. I would just throw the deeper out and let it sit in the area the crappie schools were moving through. When the fish alarm started going off I would throw the jig out to the Deeper and excitedly wait for the bite which always would come within seconds. BTW I have my Deeper tied onto 50lb braid on a 6-6 heavy spinning rig (which I normally use for my big swimbaits) and can make 40 to 50 yard throws with it. Now I have mapped almost everywhere I can throw to, and have a good picture of the depth and structure features of my local lake. Not only did I check out the features that I knew were there by "feel" before, but I also found a couple that I didn't know were there! I have used this knowledge to my advantage, too, and caught some fish in areas that I had not thought of trying before on these new found structures. Next, it is very cool to know where the fish are and where they are not. What a satisfying feeling it is to have the Deeper mark fish, then throw lures out to them, and catch the ones you just painted on your graph! And finally the coup de grace, I caught my personal best crappie, 2lbs 9oz 16 3/4 inches! I did not have the Deeper in the water at the time but had previously used it to find this area that the crappie hang out. So in closing the Deeper has enabled me to enjoy fishing in a season during which I normally would not even throw a line in, has put me on fish, has helped me to understand what is going on in my local lake this winter, and has helped me catch a personal best. I am changing my rating to 5 stars.
UPDATE: UPDATE: UPDATE: 9/2/17 ( See below for updated information)
I have been using the Deeper Smart Sonar PRO+ now for about 3 weeks. I researched and compared the competitors products and decided to go with the Deeper. It works very well, it is simple and straightforward. I would recommend the product as it functions as advertised. It does concern me that the price has gone up 16.82 on Amazon in less than 3 weeks!
I did however give it a 4 star rating rather than a 5 star rating for two reasons. The first reason is that the sonar ball does disconnect from the phone occasionally requiring you to reel it back in to reconnect, one time I had to stop and restart the app to get it to reconnect. But that is really a minor concern and I knew about that possibility happening before I purchased it. The main reasons that I couldn't give it a 5 star rating is the lack of customer service that the Deeper company provides to the end user when a problem comes up. I damaged the top cover of my Deeper sonar ball so I contacted Deeper's customer service dept to purchase another stock black replacement cover. They informed me that they don't offer the stock sonar ball cover, "to the end user" and they recommended that I purchase the "night cover" as a replacement. While that is A solution, in my opinion, that is really a poor company decision in regard to servicing the needs of the customers in this age of Amazon sets the standard, customer service driven, no questions asked return policies, retail business models.
So potential buyers of the Deeper Sonar, you are, in the words of the Deeper customer service team, the "end user". I prefer to refer to myself as the "customer", aka, the reason that you are in business Deeper, think about it.
And this "end user", unfortunately, will always have a caveat included in every review, every story and in EVERY conversation, (and you can't take this thing anywhere when there are people around, and cast it out, without drawing a crowd around you asking questions about it!) about the Deeper Smart Sonar Pro+ about the poor customer service he received from the manufacturer, over a simple plastic cover.
So to sum up my review, my recommendation is to buy the Deeper Smart Sonar, you will love it, it's awesome, it works! Just don't break it!
And if any of you out there end up with an extra undamaged stock black sonar ball cover that you would like to sell please let me know...lol
UPDATE 9/2/17
The Deeper customer service team contacted me immediately after I posted my review. They apologized for the manner in which my issue was initially handled and they offered to send me a new replacement cover for my Deeper Pro + for no charge, they also offered to send me a car charger and a phone holder, all for no charge, for the misunderstanding! They sent it out immediately once they had my address, and even sent me an email a couple of days later to keep me informed on the progress. Everything arrived in a few days and in perfect shape.
Thanks Deeper team, you really stepped up and took great care of your customer! I use my Deeper Pro+ every week and it consistently puts us on the fish!
Ken
This product is exactly as described by the multitude of reviews on YouTube. It's a ton of fun and very interesting. It's easy to use and the tutorials are simple to follow. The only thing I would really recommend is to use a very heavy rod and reel outfit with it. I'm using 30 test braided line and think I'll up it to 50 test. I bought a cheap $20 Whuppin Stick from Cabelas that's as stiff as a 2x4. First thought it might be an overkill, but after using it the first time found that it wasn't at all. It made throwing the $200 + Deeper out into the water a lot less terrifying. I'm using the Deeper in the muddy Mississippi River and the readings I'm getting are terrific. I'm also using the Deeper with an iPod attached to the rod. They paired up in an instant, and I can see the screen without a problem. If you have the money and are looking for a castable sonar unit don't hesitate to buy this one. I can't recommend it enough.
This little unit really surprised me. Sure it's not a side scanning, 3d imaging unit, but for the price and convenience, it it a top notch gadget. I've used it in small deep rivers both attached to a small boat, and casting to map contour. It's great for locating structure and fish when bank fishing. The mapping feature is great and it records gps data as well as notes. Also, the battery life is much better than I would have imagined. I've used it full days of ice fishing in 0 degree weather on a singe charge.
As far as casting, I put it on a heavy or extra heavy flipping stick with 80lb braid and a heavy snap swivel. You can cast it a country mile, but do bring a big stick to throw it. I've never experienced any problems with the wifi range.
It really shines ice fishing. You can quickly check holes and the locations are automatically recorded. The ice fishing mode has a flasher and 2d image stream. It's sensitive enough to mark small perch flies in 50ft of water. I like to drill a lot of holes over a large area before fishing, and carrying this around makes surveying the area very easy.
A real advantage of this is that all of the computing is done in your device. The sonar unit just has record and send data to your device. I guarantee your phone has 100x more processing power than a $1k sonar unit, and because of the programming platform, the ability to write good software is much easier. It would be nice to see full boat units made to use android. Even the best units have terrible controls IMO.
One small gripe is its inability to read in very shallow water. It's not a big problem, but once in a blue moon there is a reason to use it in 3ft of water. Also, an easily replaceable battery would be a plus in case you forget to charge the unit, or it dies.
Overall, this is a big win. The sonar tech isn't top level, but the software behind it and the portability really make this a good product. I imagine wireless transducers will be the future of the consumer sonar market.
This sonar works good. I was surprised to see how shallow one pond was that I fish at. And I was surprised to see how another smaller pond was much deeper. The graph is easy to read and see weeds and bottom contours. I have not had the chance to view an underwater structure, like an old dock or timber, etc. Fish are viewed in a different color so easy to see on the graph within the weeds. I found there is a lot to reading a sonar, like being able to identify the bottom type, thermoclines, fish, types of weeds, etc. The graph provides enough data to gain a lot of knowledge about the lake bottom and fish location.
I did have one major problem, I casted the sonar using a nylon line on a windy day. Sometime after getting the sonar out the line to the attachment point on the sonar unscrewed off. I pulled in the line only to find the steel attachment point on the end of the line. The sonar was still out in the water. It was too far to reach with a stick and from the sonar graph the water depth was around 5.5 ft so too far to think about walking out to it. Luckily the pond was small and it was very windy. I waiting about a half hour for the sonar to reach the other side of the pond and was able to retrieve it. I did check the attachment point after I attached the line to it. I think it unscrewed a little while dealing with it in the wind and unscrewed the rest of the way in the water due to the wind. Really glad I learned this lesson while in a small pond. I will use locktite on the screw from now on. Really need a better way on these connection points, a simple screw does not work well.
While I was waiting for the sonar to reach the opposite side of the pond I did get a good lake map of the bottom. During this whole time, including when I walked around the pond to the opposite side I did not loose wifi connection. I thought I would because going around the pond took the sonar to its limit. I did have a very hard time spotting the sonar in the water from the other side. The sonar is black and the water is dark as well. At first I thought it washed ashore and was in the weeds somewhere but I looked at the sonar map and it was still showing 8 ft of water so I knew it didn't make it in yet. After looking around for a while I spotted it. It would be better to have a lighter color top on this sonar. With all this adventure the battery did not get low.
One thing I noticed, using a line that sinks is not the best thing for using this sonar. I know a lot of people use braid but I find that a sinking line gets caught up in the weeds and does not allow the sonar to float out with the line attached. It would be much better in my opinion to use a line that floats like mono or a braid that does not sink. That way you can float this thing out without worrying about the line catching on the bottom. Only issue is you need a large reel to hold heavy mono line but it would be more useful.
Feature Product
- Versatile, wireless, castable fish finder for avid anglers, with an emphasis on shore fishing.
- Find fish and hot-spots faster. See fish location, their size and suspended depth as well as underwater structure, vegetation, bottom contour and hardness. Know water depth and temperature.
- Built-in GPS enables you to create bathymetric maps from the shore. Enjoy free access to Lake book, Deeper's bathymetric management platform where you can save, review and analyze all of your maps on any device from the comfort of home.
- Casts up to 330ft and scans down to 260ft. It operates with dual beam sonar frequency, 55° wide beam (90kHz) and 15° narrow beam (290kHz).
- Generates its own Wi-Fi signal to sync with your smartphone, anytime, anywhere. Pairs with the free, easy-to-use Deeper App, updated monthly. Compatible with iOS and Android devices. Made in Europe. 24/7 customer support.
Description
The Deeper PRO+ smart sonar is a versatile, wireless, castable fish finder with built-in GPS. Its unique versatility makes it suitable for trolling from a kayak or boat, casting from the shore or using as an ice flasher for winter fishing. Displayed on your smartphone, you’ll be able to see fish location, size and suspended depth. You’ll know water temperature and depth as well as underwater structure, vegetation, bottom contour and hardness all so you can level up your game and fish strategically. Smaller than a baseball and lighter than a big chocolate bar, the PRO+ weighs only 3. 5oz and fits in the palm of your hand. It casts further and scans deeper than any other castable fish finder on the market. It has dual beam scanning for shallow and deep waters. It generates its own Wi-Fi signal to connect to your smartphone. Built-in GPS allows you to create bathymetric maps from the shore and enjoy free access to Lake book, Deeper’s bathymetric management platform where you can save, retrieve, analyze and even share all of your scans and maps. Now that you’ll know the waters, spend more time catching and less time searching, sweating and swearing.
As someone who almost always fishes from shore this is amazing for seeing what is below the water. I can finally see what the area I am fishing looks like beyond what I can physically see. I have compared what the Deeper shows me with a map of the lake and have found it is pretty accurate. I am still getting used to it but it is nice to see how deep the water gets and how fast it gets deep for lure selection. The map function is nice but a little problematic for fishing from shore. To make a good map you would have to cast straight out reel in then walk 5-15 feel over cast straight out and reel in. I really see it being better for a kayak or other small boat. Never the less it is an interesting function.
As you can see in the picture if you stay stationary you can't make that good of a map. The satalite picture is from about 2 years ago when water levels were much higher. I was testing it out from those two points circled. I think the best info you get from it is from the traditional graphs. You can go to most sporting good stores and buy a fishing map that shows the depth of the lake and other features. I will have to try it out in a more thought out approach next time.
Make sure you have a stout rod to cast this on. It weights about 3.5 oz so it is still heavy for most fishing rods. The first time I tried it on one of my regular rods that was a heavy power rod but the tip was soft so just holding up the deeper was causing the tip to bend a lot. I went to Cabela's and got a 8 foot heavy whuppin' stick that has a very stout tip. I got a cheap reel for it and tried it out and found I can toss the deeper further than I can usually cast a lure. This set up feels very beefy and seems like it will last a while for tossing the Deeper out. This also gives me the bonus of having a dedicated rod for the Deeper so I don't have to switch between the Deeper and a lure
I am still getting used to it and will update this review as I find more out about it.
A great fish finder for those on a budget and always on the go. The price is very affordable for the solid quality of the product.
It works with a tablet of smart phone easily with the Deeper App on the device using wifi. It will only connect to one device at a time. The initial connection takes a little time, but it will quickly restore a connection each time the Deeper is taken from and put back into the water.
The only down side is the use on a cell phone or tablet will use up a batteries charge quickly compared to normal use. The best thing to do is have a battery pack handy to keep your device running.
This is a great depth finder, especial for those who ice fish. It has a flasher mode that works very well. You can really benifit from the flasher side by side to a traditional depth /fish finder.
Purchased a few weeks ago and had the first opportunity to try out today. Went over my local creek not knowing what to expect and not honestly expecting much. Connection was a breeze. Connected the Deeper to my line via a small speed snap swivel on 8lb mono test. Rod was a kastking Blackhawk 2 telescopic rod with a Abu Garcia Revo spinning reel. Nothing huge or heavy. Dropped the Deeper in the water in front of me and it was connected to the app in seconds. Once the dogs learned it was not theirs to chase I was able to gently flick it out 15 feet first off. Didn't put a lot of effort into casting due to my set up was was comfortably ably to make 30 feet and more out into the creek. No connection issues at all for me and the app showed me what it was seeing. Over a 60 feet run of creek the Deeper registered from 2 to 5ft 8" depth, no weed or growth at all and not a single fish in sight.
I let it run all the way to a rock formation where the water dropped away and the current picked up. Now I crossed to the down stream side of the rock formation and flipped the deeper out again to check the depth of the eddies' etc. Bingo - as expected all the fish were located around and in faster current in 4ft of water. (Until the dogs arrived) I threw out a small crappie jig and eventually picked up a small bass and blue gill. A possible combination of wrong presentation and four legged friends didn't help but it was fun. Looking forward to trying the Deeper out again and seeing how it performs.
Pros:
Extremely portable
No wires
Excellent graph and flasher capabilities
Lightweight
Decent battery life (took it ice fishing a couple days ago and used it for about 4 1/2 hours. Still had 45% left)
Easy to use app with many features
Dual beam
Good neoprene pouch
Cons:
Because it floats, when it's in a hole with thick ice (I was on 16 inches last week), the sonar data is a bit weaker. Still works well enough to see most fish, but not as effective.
Lack of accessories- Doesn't come with the orange cap for more visibility, the rubber rod mount, nor the flexible boat mount. Instead, you have to pay $10 for the orange cap, $19 for the rubber mount, and $58 for the boat mount separately.
*****UPDATE*******
I received the new sonar on 12/29. I contacted the person that I had been working with at Deeper, and he apologized for the delay, but with the Holidays, they were pretty backed up fulfilling orders. That was understandable. I have not had the chance to go out and use it yet though, as there is ice on the water here, and I don't hard water fish.
I love the sonar and other features of the Deeper Pro+. The app is very easy to use, and got some very good maps of the places I used it. It is much easier for me to see using the orange "night" cover during the day as well. Had a hard time seeing the black. I did have a "fatal" failure though it was not because of the device necessarily, but rather the equipment I used with it. Make sure you use a good strong musky type rod, and a dependable reel. I used a reel that I had been having issues with, and during a medium/hard cast to get some distance, the reel backlashed and knotted up when the Deeper was about 20 ft out or so, and my 65 lb line pulled the escrutcheon out the cover, and my Deeper floated away on the bay of Green Bay. After a lot of emails proving the failure, Deeper has agreed to replace my sonar. I have not yet received it after 2-3 weeks. Would give more stars if I did not have to jump through so many hoops and wait so long. Will update when I get my new one and have a chance to get more use.
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