Garmin Striker Cast Review- Is it the Best Castable Fish Finder?

garmin striker cast review cover photo

This is our Garmin Striker Cast Review.

You won’t hear those ominous bing…bing…bing sounds as enemy sonar bounces off the hull of a submarine filled with nervous crewmen like you do in those old war movies, but the technology is almost identical.

Personal sonar is the fuel that drives the ever-increasing demand for fish finders by serious anglers. Once the realm of bulky, hard-to-use devices that required a separate, heavy 12-volt car battery to operate, they’ve steadily diminished in size with the advancement of technology.

The Garmin fish finder is a prime example of advanced technology bringing state-of-the-art fish locating capabilities in a tiny, easy-to-use product.

The Garmin Striker Cast Reviewed

Older, stationary fish finders utilized two techniques to locate fish. Either they sent a signal down, or off to the side of a boat as it trolled above. This method works well for most applications but requires a boat, mounting hardware, and a stationary viewing screen.

The Striker Cast GPS removes a lot of unnecessary hardware from the angling equation. Instead of physically moving to a location above an underwater area you’re interested in, cast a device to the location and view the information on your cell phone or other mobile devices.

The concept is revolutionary and easy to use at the same time.

How Does the Garmin Striker Cast Work?

Hook the unit to a fishing rod wound with a 20 to 30-pound test line. Braided line works the best, but monofilament will do the job too.

Tie a heavy-duty snap swivel to your line, hook it to the Striker Cast GPS, and it’s ready to use.

You may wonder why the heavier weight line is necessary. The answer is it depends on how smooth you cast. If you’re adept at tossing heavy lures with a light line, you don’t have to worry about it. But, if you occasionally snap lures off the end of your line on casts, this is one lure you don’t want to see flying out a few hundred feet into the lake. That’s an expensive price to pay for a single bad cast.

Make sure the unit is fully charged. It is a rechargeable fish finder rated to last 10 or more hours out on the water, but it’s always a good idea to have it fully charged when you reach your fishing destination.

Another good idea to do at home before you go out to spotty digital service on your favorite lake is to download the free app from Garmin for the Striker Cast onto your iPhone, iPad, or Android device.

With this fish finder GPS combo a few feet away from your cell phone or tablet, pair the two devices. The setup is quick, easy to follow, and takes just a couple of minutes.

With your checklist of 1. Striker Cast charged 2. Striker Cast, securely attached to a rod and reel, 3. Striker Cast and cell phone or tablet paired, you are now ready to use it.

If you’re a long-range caster with a 12-foot surf rod and several hundred yards of line on your spool, back up the wagon a bit.  The Striker Cast GPS has a transmitting range up to 200 feet, and you can cast beyond that distance if you’re not careful. No signal means you’ve cast the Garmin too far into the lake, but the good news is its signal will reach you as you reel in the line.

With the Garmin Striker Cast GPS floating on the water, you’re ready for an excellent experience in mapping subsurface obstacles, finding individual or schools of fish and structure locations.

Most anglers use one rod and reel for this fish finder and a second rod and reel baited with an applicable live bait, or with a lure, jig or special rigging designed to catch specific species of fish.

Garmin Striker Cast GPS Specs

This fish finder GPS combo tips the scales at a modest 2.6 ounces (ca. 98 g) A small 3×3×2.28 inch (ca. 6 cm) footprint creates an innocuous presence on the surface. IF you’re worried about your boat disturbing fish as you troll or float over your favorite fishing spots, you won’t have to worry about the Ninja-like presence of this tiny fish finder.

The Striker Cast castable sonar is rated for a wide temperature range from -4 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit (ca. 60 °C). It will take a charge in slightly warmer conditions from 41 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (ca. 40 °C).  

Earlier technology offered only one sonar frequency in the first fish finders. The Garmin Striker Cast GPS doesn’t have the triple frequency capacity of larger, stationary fish finders, but it does offer dual bandwidth in 260 and 455 kHz. This provides an effective range of two feet to 150 feet (ca. 46 m), perfect for most angling situations on lakes, reservoirs, and rivers.

At 260 kHz it has a beam width of 22×63 inches (1.6 m) and at the higher 455 kHz, the beam is tighter at 9×14 inches (ca. 36 cm).

A fish symbol clearly marks the location of an individual or multiple fish on your cell phone screen. Built-in autogain minimizes background clutter, enhances your view of fish and submerged structure, and maximizes potential targets.

Garmin’s A-Scope technology offers real-time displays of fish as they swim through the transducer beam.

Experienced anglers know that fish often feed at a specific water temperature. Bands of water with identical temperatures are frequently ravened for schools of walleye, trout, or perch. The Garmin Strike Cast GPS has an included water temperature sensor.

Mapping

Underwater topography map

Garmin prides itself on its Quickdraw software that enables a user to create their own custom maps. Underwater structures, snags, exposed shelves, they’re all easy to map with contours of 12 inches with the included Quickdraw software.

Garmin Striker Cast for Ice Fishing

One of the advantages of a small, easy-to-locate fish finder like the Garmin Striker Cast GPS is the ability to use it ice fishing. 

You don’t need to pack a heavy battery, display, and bulky transducer to the ice anymore. The Striker Cast is a favorite for ice fishermen and has an impressive battery life.

It will operate through the ice without a hole drilled, but works exactly as it does on open water once you’ve punched a hole through the frozen water.

The advantage of knowing where the fish are under the ice is invaluable. Some of the best ice fishing comes at night, in the darkness of the depths of winter. The bright cell phone display relayed to you from your Garmin Strike Cast is viewable in bright daylight and provides its own illumination on the darkest nights.

You’ll have the upper hand with walleye, ling-cod, perch, or lake trout on those frozen northern lakes this winter.

Garmin Community

Garmin has a bank of 17,000 lakes, rivers, and offshore locations available for purchase in its additional mapping software packages.

The integrated GPS establishes your physical location within a few inches and, when integrated into your Striker Cast, it creates beautifully detailed maps. These custom maps are shared by fellow Garmin fish finder users on community forums.

Depth range shading, and the ability to mark waypoints, make this a valuable fish finder to use repeatedly on your fishing adventures.

Locate a lively spot for fishing action one afternoon and return to it next week, next month, or in a couple of years and find the exact location each and every time.

Garmin Striker Cast App

With the free Striker Cast app, you can view sonar on your phone when paired with a striker device. Setup is easy and scans are simple to interpret!

Select your mode with either traditional 2-D sonar or the ice fishing flasher modes, giving you plenty of flexibility to use this fish finder on ice or open water. The Garmin Striker Cast App is the key to unlocking the flexibility this fish finder is capable of.

Included Equipment

Your Garmin Striker Cast arrives with the compact device, a carrying bag, a 16-5 inch tether, complete documentation, and a USB cable for charging.

You can purchase a Marine App for ocean fishing, and additional charging cables as accessories.

Determine whether you will need to utilize the optional GPS, then explore a couple of buying options below.

Conclusion

Packing full features into a compact fish finder is a wave of the future on the waters of your favorite lake, river, reservoir, or even short distances offshore from the ocean beach. The Garmin Strike Cast GPS brings full-featured power into a compact device you can carry in your shirt pocket or tackle box.

The long-lasting battery life allows a full day of use with your cell phone, the only other electronic device you’ll need, to get crisp images of fish and underwater structures from depths up to 150 feet (45.72 m) below the surface.

In our review of the Garmin Striker Cast, the fish finder earned high praise from novice and experienced anglers alike.

Pack your bags for a great angling adventure that you can record for future use the next time the fishing bug bites.

Check out this video From Garmin below to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth-

For more reviews on Garmin fish finders and other fishfinder brands, check out the pages below:

Randy Tucker

Randy Tucker

I am a fishing enthusiast and writer from Wyoming. I travel all over the world to experience different types of fishing and often write about it for different publications. I mostly fish for walleye, perch, catfish, crappie, trout, bass, and ling. The outdoors has been an important part of my life since childhood, and I am fortunate to make a living while enjoying what I love.

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