Forward Facing Sonar Made EASY! | Lowrance Eagle Eye

All right, Matt Johnson here with Omniafishing, and we have been getting a ton of questions about Lorenz's Eagle Eye product. And I thought, who better to ask than Matthew Laster, an old friend of mine who is the director of integrated fishing systems. When I worked with Matthew, he was the head of Sonar. So he's the guy you want to talk to, and he was the product manager for the Eagle Eye system. So thanks for jumping on the call with me, Matt. You make me sound super important, and that's quite the intro there, Matt. Well, I think you deserve it, so. I'm definitely. I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Yeah, so we'll get this out and answer a bunch of questions, talk a lot about. So obviously, live Sonar is all the rage, lots of conversations about it, and Lorenz has had active target and active target two for a really long time. But if you maybe quickly do kind of a breakout of the differences between those two, and then we'll compare and contrast my active target with the Eagle Eye system. Yeah, sure. So active target was our second generation live Sonar product, if you want to call it that. So I think everybody at this point knows what live Sonar forward facing Sonar, whatever term you want to call it is. It's the ability to look out in front of you wherever your trolling motor or your transducer really is pointed. See fish throwing around in real time, plot baits right in front of them, watch baits come back to you, that kind of stuff. So active target was our second generation of that, and then active target two was our third. And that one really just improved on where we were in the beginning with active target one. So it was better range, better clarity, better at stitching all the sectors together just so the picture was more nice and clear and congruent. That's our current top tier live Sonar product. So you can still find either one out in the market, some places, the same way everything works, the previous generation of stuff goes on promo when new stuff comes out. But then last year we just launched the new Eagle Eye product which is built off of the active target to technology. So it shares a lot of things in common with active target too. Yeah, all right perfect. And then active target is a plug in with a module for existing Lorentz customers, right? You have to have an existing, what platoon is still kind of what? So all of the active target systems are a transducer that plugs into a module and then ethernets to a display, right? There's a lot of Sonar going on in there in the transducer and in the module. We just need the extra horsepower in the module to process all the signals and everything, right? So all of those things go to anything that is in the current-ish generation with an ethernet connector on the back. So that's HDS live, HDS Pro, Elite FS, and then we went back to HDS Carbon as well for active target compatibility. Well, perfect. So if you're an existing Lorentz customer and you want to get into this live Sonar, that's something you should be looking at. Active target too or finding an active target component that you can plug into that existing system. Yeah, if you've already got HDSs or if you've already got Elite FSs, all you've got to do is buy an active target system and it'll plug right in and you're off and running, right? If you're a more serious angler and you're looking to buy a full system, you can buy an HDS Pro. You can buy one of the new Elite FSs, we just launched the 10 and 12 inch screen sizes for those. And you can buy an active target too and plug that right into the back as well. Yep. And all items that we sell here at Omnia, so well, very familiar. When we're getting a lot of questions, we're hearing from people who are not yet Lorentz customers or don't currently have electronics on their boat and they're looking for a fairly easy to afford entry point for active target. Yep, so live sonar, no matter how you slice it, where it comes from, who makes it, it's not the most affordable thing on the market, right? You're looking at roughly two-ish thousand dollars at a minimum to get into live sonar, right? By the time you buy the transducer, the module, the display, whether it's ours or somebody else's, that's round about the ballpark of what you're looking to spend in price, right? So it's a pretty high barrier to entry for a lot of people. So we launched as an extension of the Eagle series, which we launched last year , which is our Lorentz entry level family of displays and sonars. As an extension of that, we launched what we call the Eagle I9. And so that's a nine-inch display with a version of active target too that doesn't need a module, any of that kind of stuff that plugs right into the back of the display. And you get the transducer and the display all for $9.99. Yep, and so it doesn't have the full capability or all of the sonar beams of the active target. So, okay, so three beams for active target and one for Eagle I, is that right? Yeah, so if you take an active target or an active target to transducer, it has those kind of three faces on the bottom, right? Those are what we call arrays. It's a whole bunch of sonar elements in there, a whole bunch of technology nobody needs to know about. But each one of those faces is responsible for certain parts of that full area of coverage. That's how you get the 135 degrees, right? The one that's pointed this way is responsible for here. The next one over is responsible for over here. Same thing, right? What we did for Eagle I is we took those three faces of active target too and we cut two of them off, basically. So what that gives us is a forward-looking beam and a downward-looking beam of live sonar. Got it. And then there are a lot of customers who still want arches, fish arches, and they still want that traditional view. Is that also included in that transducer? We stuck that in the Eagle I transducer as well. So in addition to your live forward-facing beam and your live downward-facing beam, you also get traditional chirp sonar, so your big fat fish arches, bottom tracking, all that kind of stuff. And then you also get down-scan with fish reveal as well. So that'll be your super high-resolution down-scan imagery with your big fish arches overlaid as well. It's a Lorentz exclusive. Perfect. So if somebody wants to get into this, they're looking to mount a single trans ducer. There's no module, no ethernet. One cord right through the head unit. Yeah. It does all the work. Correct. Yep. It's a small transducer. Again, we took two of the arrays off, so we didn't need all that processing horsepower to process all those signals from all those arrays inside of the transducer, right? So that'll let us get rid of the module in the middle. So that transducer plugs right into the back of the Eagle I-9 display. And I like to say they're designed as a system, right? So that Eagle I-9 display is different than a regular Eagle 9. It's got different sonar hardware in there and everything. Basically the only transducer that Eagle I-9 will accept is that Eagle I trans ducer. And the same thing is true on the opposite, right? That Eagle I transducer will only plug into an Eagle I-9. You can't plug it into a regular Eagle or an HDS or anything like that. Right. But fully integrated, you're basically ready to roll. There's not a lot of tuning. It's ready to view. Yeah. It's all of our nice auto-tuned sonar. So it's, you know, you install it properly. It's going to look good for you right out of the box. It's got built-in charting as well. So you got three foot contours on lakes all over the country. I know charting is near and dear to your heart, Matt. That's right. So. Next one. Some's included, you said? Yeah, yeah. We put an embedded chart in there. So there is a version that has a C-Map card bundled in the box if you want one foot contours or coastal or Canada. It's a different part number. It just has a C-Map SD card in the box. But the regular one, the one you're going to find most commonly has that three foot embedded chart in there. Got it. And then we have a lot of kayak customers and they're asking us whether or not that's a good fit for them. Yeah. So you hear any websites? There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. There'll be a lot of websites. Right now, it's a little bit-- I mean, the kayak market is very good at DIY, right? So at the moment, it's a little bit of DIY if you want to do it. Because the way that the transducer mounts today, we didn't put any of the teeth in there to aim the transducer, any of that kind of stuff, because you only have the two beams and only goes one way. So it actually clicks into the bracket and you can't move it, right? It's locked in place. You can't adjust it, right? So what that means is we basically put it on the trolling motor lower unit is the mount that you get in the box. And it goes right on the side of the lower unit. Obviously, if you're in a kayak, you actually-- there's a lot of kayaks now that have trolling motors on them, right? But if you're on a kayak and you want it on a pole or something, right now it's a little bit of DIY. I do have-- I showed you this right before we started Matt, but I do have a little accessory we're working on. This is just a little bracket that will go on a shaft. So you'll be able to buy this separately if you're-- once we're ready with this , but this is coming. Yeah. So. On the exclusive. I like it. I like it. Dropping more information here. We have heard from a few people who are using the active target transducer in a side view, but I think that's probably because their other chirp and traditional sonar is the separate transducer, right? So not a hill on the eagle eye? Yeah, yeah. So you don't get what we call scout mode in eagle eye. And it's really two reasons, right? So yes, that scout mode is very, very powerful, especially if you're trying to fish beds or looking for a piece of structure or trying to see if there's fish sitting set up on a rock pile or on a ledge. Like, scout mode is super powerful for that. But there's two reasons why we didn't put it in eagle eye. One is because we kind of need that down beam all the time in order to kind of have your sonar and everything, right? So if you flip the transducer on the side, you don't have a beam pointed down anymore, right? The other reason why is because we don't have that full coverage area, right? So you end up, if you put it in scout mode, you'd end up with some live sonar over here and some live sonar over there, a gap in the middle one, a gap on either side. And it just, it wasn't going to cover enough area and look good enough in scout mode for us to stick it in there. Having said that, those two beams are perfectly fine for forward and down. If you're vertically jigging ice fishing or sitting right under, you know, right on top of a brush pile, trying to get a fish out from underneath you, that down mode is awesome. That forward mode is enough coverage area that if you're, you know, making a presentation, throwing a jerk bait, throwing a crank bait, spinner bait, Alabama rig, whatever, like you can watch it hit the water, come all the way back to you. It's really cool. It gives you everything you need at that $9.99 price point. Yeah, I love it. Well, that's all I had for you. I think that answers most of the questions that we're getting for most of our customers. I think my last question is, how'd you pull this off? Like I wouldn't expect something so great to come out of you as a product manager. Really? Wow. You've been great, Matthew. I appreciate the time and coming on and giving everybody some answers to what eagle eyes we're seeing them start to fly off the shelves. And it's a great product, great entry point for customer looking to get in-sl ives. Yeah. If you're a customer who's looking at getting into live sonar and don't necessarily want to spend, like I said, $2-ish thousand, you know, eagle eyes a great option for you. We're seeing a lot of guys, like you said, on kayaks. We're seeing a lot of people put them on, you know, the kind of smaller aluminum boats, you know, put a regular eagle at the console so you have your side skin and stuff back there. And then an eagle eye up on the front. So you've got your live sonar for the front, you know, everything you need in two spots. It's a fairly easy add-on if you're a customer like that too. Yeah, it's great. All right. Well, thanks for the time. Good luck in the water. Stay warm down there and we'll talk to you soon, Matt. You stay warm up there. Yeah. See you, buddy. Bye. (upbeat music)