Hiya Rigdvr
I wish to disagree with you

(if thats ok with you

)
Firstly, that little fish symbols you see on the screen is more a gimmick than anything else. Put your FISH ID. off on your echo. Fish will now be shown as either arches or little scratches on your echo. The entry level echo's are really only good for reading water depth and the bottom structure. Reefs and pinnacles will generally show up quite easily on most echo's. The entry level echo's are great because they come with no frills and are generally very user friendly. Play around with your settings to get the best out of your echo. In all honesty, for spearing all you want is water depth and bottom structure.
A bit of background. I spent 8 months owning my own commercial fishing boat. We fish with handlines and went to sea virtually everyday (weather permiting of course) Our target species were yellowtail, cob (mulloway/jewfish) and cape salmon. All these are fish that swim in schools. I started out with a monochrome furuno4000. Was a good echo but we battled to differenciate between baitfish and predatory fish. I eventually bought a Koden colour echo, at 3 times the price of the furuno. The difference was amazing!!! We could tell from the size and type of writing on the echo, what type of fish was below us. We really did well with that colour echo. On my tuna boat, i had a colour furuno echo. whilst trolling for YF tuna, you would ride over a school at say 10 fathoms deep, and then you'd see the red mark on the echo as the fish rise, seconds later the reel/reels would be screaming.
So to sum it up, as a spearo, an entry level echo is brilliant, but if you're really hardcore and really into shooting schooling fish, i'd suggest a top of the range colour echo from any reputable brand.
Just my .02c
Regards
miles
