Sportfishing Legend's Top 5 Reasons to Love Raymarine

Since launching his charter business in 1988, Scotty Thorrington has built a reputation as one of the most respected figures in the Australian marlin fishery, with thousands of tagged and released marlin and a long list of tournament wins to his name.

Operating along the East Coast of Australia, Scotty runs a 34ft sportfishing vessel during the summer months, chasing marlin offshore, and switches to deep-water reef fishing the rest of the year. He also captains a 21ft flats skiff, targeting trophy-sized flathead and mulloway in his local river system.

With decades of experience and a relentless drive for precision, Scotty relies on Raymarine to keep him ahead of the game. Here, he shares his top five favorite things about Raymarine, and why they make all the difference out on the water.

1. Wide Beam, Deep Insight

The Axiom Pro series when combined with the B275LHW transducer, with an operating frequency range of 150-250khz. This transducer running a constant beam width of 25 degrees is the perfect combo for fishing for pelagic fish such as marlin and tuna. The wide angle gives you almost a 2:1 ratio, i.e. if you are in 100m of water, you can look at almost 50m of seabed underneath the boat.

Running the Axiom on manual and reducing the color threshold to eliminate all the yellows and blues on the screen allows you to apply more gain.

Running a scroll speed of 200% stretches the marks and allows you to see pelagic fish such as marlin that are on the edge of the transducer cone.

This combination can be used in shallow water and in deep water applications over the continental shelf. Running the B275 transducer through a CP470 or CP570 black box will give you even more power. Although plugging the transducer straight into the back of the Axiom unit will give you perfect readings in most game fishing scenarios with depths of 200m.

The ability to change the pallet color settings to suit environmental conditions should not be taken for granted. The sunburst pallet color is easier on my eyes especially when fishing with polarized sunglasses. It is also easy to look between your chart plotter and sounder without your eyes having to refocus.

2. Side Scan, Full Control

The RV212 Bronze 3D series side scan transducers are mounted up forward in my Black Watch sportfishing boat gives me the ability to mark large fish like marlin up to 100m on either side of my boat. I use it daily, catching bait in the morning, to bluewater marlin fishing during the day. When fishing around bait schools I can mark bait and large predatory fish off to one side and touch the screen and place a mark in that position. I bring the boat around in series of turns and use the SideVision™ to mark the progress of the fish, to get its direction of travel and basically “head it off at the pass.”

I also use it to find patches of reef when targeting reef species like snapper, kingfish and pearl perch.

The SideVision gives me the ability to compete against large boats that are running omni directional sonars during marlin fishing tournaments. I run this screen on auto gain all the time and once again change the background pallet color to provide the best visibility on the day. My favorite pallet color is mahi.

Our flats skiff runs the Raymarine Element that shoots on an extremely high frequency of 1.2mhz for clear close-up fishing around structure such as sunken boats, rock bars and docks.

3. Smart Charts, Safer Routes

The charting system is easy to use with a fast redraw and is super accurate. We recently changed to the Raymarine LightHouse Charts. This new charting system is fast developing into one of the best and I look forward to continuing support with developing upgrades. The satellite views are particularly useful when fishing around un-surveyed areas containing shallow reefs and bomboras.

The ability to change the color in different depth contours gives me peace of mind when operating in shallow reef country. The ability to draw our own contour lines using bathometric recording is great for future fishing opportunities and safe navigation. An infinite heading vector line allows me to navigate through treacherous shoals both night and day. 

Course and route planning is easy with the touchscreen, with latitude and longitude of both the vessel and cursor position is easily displayed. The ability to change the screen display showing pertinent data like depth, speed, water temperature and time is fantastic.

A drop-down menu on the left-hand side of the screen can be programmed to show you cross track error, distance to, and time to waypoint. The ability to overlay the radar screen on the chart page allows you to see land features, rain, and storm fronts and other vessels.

4. Straight Course, Zero Hassle

My autopilot steers our boat dead straight even in the roughest conditions. The ability to go point to point without deviating of course saves me fuel and time. 

The original old pilot pump has been in there for over 10 years (we use the boat over 250 days per year) and has never let me down. Used in conjunction with a chartplotter you can pick your destination, press go to, and then track and enter. It is that easy! 

You can also steer the boat manually with the knob on the pilot when used in power steer mode. A rolling highway showing cross track error and distance to destination can be displayed on both the pilot and the Axiom Pro screen.

5. Radar That Sees Everything

My new favorite is the Raymarine Cyclone Radar, it is a 4-foot powerful open array radar which is simple to use. It marks flocks of birds, small boats and even the spouts of whales during their winter migration.

I can track multiple targets at a time and easily switch between harbor, offshore and bird mode at the push of a button. It runs brilliantly on auto, but is easily tuned in conditions of choppy seas and heavy rain. If you are operating at night, you need one of these.

Learn more about Scotty, his background and boat.