New Boat, New Rig: The Marine Electronics Worth Adding First

TL;DR

Cody here. I work the marine and ATV bench, and every spring I go through the same conversation with somebody who just picked up a new boat, or a new-to-them boat, and wants to know what electronics actually belong on it. The honest answer is that it’s not a shopping list where every item matters equally. Some things earn their spot immediately and some can wait a season or two.

In this article, I walk through the order I’d actually rig a boat in if it were mine: a fish finder and chartplotter combo and GPS first, a VHF radio next, then livewell aerators, trolling motor electronics, and transducers depending on how the boat gets used. I also cover the mistakes I see most often when a new rig goes in, because most of them are wiring and planning problems, not product problems. For the full range of what we stock beyond this list, our marine electronics page covers everything by category.

My honest take is that the biggest mistake isn’t buying the wrong unit, it’s buying units in the wrong order and not planning the wiring and mounting before anything gets bolted down. Get the sequence right and the rest tends to fall into place.

• Cody, works the marine/ATV bench at Reyco Marine

Who This Article Is For

• Anyone interested in boats, motors, or outdoor power equipment
• Northern Ontario homeowners and outdoor enthusiasts
• People comparing products or planning a purchase

Start With the Big Two

When a new boat comes across the bench for rigging, the fish finder and chartplotter combo and the GPS chip inside it are the two pieces I tell people to budget for first. Everything else on this list is genuinely useful, but these two change how the boat gets used from the first trip out. A combo unit does two jobs at once, showing what’s under the boat and showing where the boat is on the water, and on a new rig that dual role is worth more than any single specialty add-on.

I say this as someone who has watched people spend their whole electronics budget on a trolling motor upgrade and then run the season with a basic depth gauge from the factory. That’s backwards. The combo unit is the piece that actually changes how many fish come over the side and how comfortably the boat gets home in bad light or fog.

The Fish Finder and Chartplotter Combo

A combo unit puts sonar and mapping on one screen instead of two separate boxes fighting for space at the helm. On a new build, that matters because dash space and wiring runs are finite, and running one power and one data cable instead of two is a real difference during install. The sonar side shows bottom structure, depth, and fish arches or marks depending on the display mode. The chartplotter side overlays that on a map with the boat’s actual position, so a good spot found on one trip is a saved waypoint on the next one, not a guess based on landmarks.

I’d rather see someone buy a mid-range combo unit new than a top-shelf standalone fish finder with no mapping, because the mapping side pays off every single trip, not just the good fishing days. The screen size matters more than people expect too. A small hand-me-down screen crammed with information gets hard to read at a glance while running, and that’s exactly when clarity matters most.

Why GPS Isn’t Optional Anymore

GPS used to be treated as an add-on. On a new rig it isn’t optional in my mind, because it does more than mark waypoints for fishing spots. It’s the backbone of a chartplotter’s mapping, and it’s what lets a boat find its way back to a launch in fog, at dusk, or on an unfamiliar lake. Northern Ontario has plenty of big water and plenty of shoreline that looks the same from a quarter mile out, and GPS is what removes the guesswork.

Most combo units already include GPS built in, so this often isn’t a separate purchase decision at all, it’s a reason to make sure the combo unit gets budgeted for early rather than treated as an upgrade for later. If a boat is going anywhere with real open water or limited landmarks, I treat GPS as part of the base rig, not an accessory.

Staying in Touch

A VHF radio is one of those items that gets skipped on a new build because a cell phone feels like it covers the same job. It doesn’t, and I say that as someone who has had this conversation more than once with a customer whose phone had no signal two bays out from the launch. Cell coverage on inland lakes and open stretches of water up here is inconsistent at best, and a dead zone doesn’t announce itself until it’s needed.

A fixed-mount VHF unit talks directly to other boats and to marine channels monitored by the Coast Guard, and it works on line of sight rather than a cell tower. That’s a meaningfully different kind of reliability. I treat a VHF as part of the same early-priority group as the combo unit and GPS, not a nice-to-have that gets added later, because the situations where it matters are exactly the situations where waiting isn’t an option. Handheld units exist too and have their place as a backup, but a fixed-mount unit wired into the boat’s power and a proper antenna does a better job overall, and it’s a straightforward add during initial rigging.

Keeping Fish Alive

For anyone rigging a boat with fishing in mind, especially tournament fishing or anyone who wants a legal keeper to make it home healthy, livewell aerators belong on the list well before some of the flashier options further down. An aerator keeps oxygen moving through the livewell water so fish don’t stress out and die before the trip is over. It sounds like a small system compared to a chartplotter, but it’s the difference between a livewell that actually works and one that’s just a tank of water.

The reason I put this in the same conversation as electronics rather than treating it as plumbing is that most modern aerator setups run on a timer and pump controlled electronically, and getting that wiring right during the initial rig avoids a lot of troubleshooting later. I see aerator complaints on the service side often enough that I know most of them trace back to a wiring or timer setting problem from day one, not a failed pump.

Aerator Timers and Battery Draw

A livewell aerator that runs constantly draws down the battery faster than it needs to, and one that runs too infrequently doesn’t keep the water oxygenated enough for the fish inside. A timer that cycles the pump on and off at a sensible interval solves both problems at once. Getting the timer set correctly during the initial rig, rather than guessing and adjusting later in the season, saves both battery life and a livewell full of dead fish on a hot day.

This is also where I tell people to think about their cranking and accessory battery setup as a whole rather than in isolation, since an aerator running all day on the same battery as the electronics package adds up. A dedicated accessory battery, sized appropriately for what’s actually being run, avoids the scenario where the fish finder dims because the livewell pump has been cycling all afternoon.

Matching the Livewell Setup to How the Boat Gets Fished

Somebody doing the occasional weekend outing with a couple of rods in the boat doesn’t need the same livewell aerator setup as somebody fishing tournaments where fish care determines a placing. The occasional angler is well served by a simple, reliable timer-controlled pump. Someone serious about tournament fishing should be looking at a setup with a bit more capacity and redundancy, because a failed aerator on tournament day is a real problem, not an inconvenience.

I’d rather match the livewell system to how the boat actually gets used than sell the same setup to everyone. It’s a conversation worth having during the initial rig, because retrofitting a bigger pump or better timer later usually means redoing wiring that was already run for something smaller.

Electric Power on the Bow

A trolling motor is where a lot of the electronics conversation gets exciting for people, and it deserves a real spot on the priority list, just not always the top one. It gives precise, quiet boat control for working structure or holding position in wind, and on newer models it comes with electronics of its own worth understanding before choosing one, foot pedal versus hand control, and GPS anchoring features on higher-end units.

I put this after the fish finder, GPS, and VHF because those three affect every trip regardless of fishing style, while a trolling motor’s value depends more on how someone actually fishes. Somebody doing mostly open-water trolling gets less day-to-day benefit from a trolling motor than someone working shoreline structure or fishing current seams. That said, once someone knows they want one, it’s worth wiring for properly the first time. If downriggers are also part of the plan for working deeper structure, our comparison of Cannon downriggers against other brands is worth a look before deciding what pairs best with the setup here.

Foot Pedal vs Hand Control

A foot-controlled trolling motor keeps both hands free for casting and rod work, which most serious anglers prefer once they’ve tried it. A hand-controlled or remote unit is simpler to install and often lower cost, and it suits somebody who isn’t casting constantly or wants a simpler control scheme. Neither is objectively better, it comes down to fishing style, and I ask people how they actually fish before recommending one over the other rather than defaulting to whichever is more popular.

Higher-end trolling motors also add GPS anchoring features that hold a boat’s position without dropping the anchor, which pairs naturally with the combo unit already covered earlier. Somebody who spends a lot of time working a single piece of structure, a rock pile or a weed edge, gets real day-to-day value from that kind of position holding, while somebody covering a lot of open water on any given trip may never use the feature enough to justify chasing it as a priority.

Battery and Wiring Considerations

Trolling motors draw meaningfully more current than a fish finder or VHF radio, and that changes the wiring conversation. A trolling motor typically needs its own dedicated battery or battery bank, sized to the motor’s thrust rating and how long it runs per outing, kept separate from the cranking battery that starts the main engine. Planning that wiring run and battery placement during the initial rig, rather than working around finished wiring later, is one of the clearest ways to avoid a rewiring job down the road.

Wire gauge matters more here than on smaller accessories, since a run that’s too thin for the current and distance involved causes voltage drop, and a trolling motor starved of voltage loses thrust and runs hotter than it should. A properly rated inline fuse or breaker on that circuit is worth the small extra step during install, since it protects the wiring and the motor itself if something downstream ever shorts out.

The Part Nobody Thinks About

The transducer is the piece that almost never comes up until something isn’t working right, and by then it’s usually a mounting problem that should have been solved during the initial rig. A transducer is what actually sends and reads the sonar signal that makes a fish finder useful in the first place, and where it’s mounted and how it’s angled affects reading quality more than the fish finder’s own specs do.

I bring this up on nearly every new rig because a great fish finder paired with a poorly mounted transducer produces mediocre readings, and the owner usually blames the unit rather than the mount. Getting the transducer placement right the first time avoids chasing a “bad reading” problem all season that was never actually about the electronics on the dash.

Transom Mount vs Trolling Motor Mount

A transom-mounted transducer is the more common setup and works well for most boats, reading depth and structure directly beneath the hull. A transducer mounted on the trolling motor itself reads ahead of the boat rather than beneath it, which some anglers prefer for scouting structure before running over it. Which one makes sense depends on whether a trolling motor is even part of the rig and how someone likes to approach fishing a piece of structure.

The height and angle of a transom mount relative to the hull and the running surface matters as much as the choice of mount type. Mounted too high, a transducer picks up turbulence and aerated water coming off the hull at speed, and the reading gets noisy right when it’s needed most. I check that clearance and angle on every install rather than assuming a stock mounting bracket position is correct for the specific hull.

Matching Frequency and Cone Angle to the Water

Different transducers cover different frequency ranges and cone angles, and that affects how much bottom area gets covered and how much detail shows up at depth. A wider cone angle covers more area but with less fine detail, while a narrower, higher-frequency signal shows finer detail directly below the boat. Northern Ontario lake conditions vary enough, from shallow weedy bays to deep clear main lake basins, that matching the transducer to how someone actually fishes matters more than chasing the highest spec number available.

Many combo units now support broadband or multi-frequency sonar that can show a wider or narrower picture depending on the mode selected, rather than locking someone into one fixed cone angle. That flexibility is genuinely useful for someone who fishes both shallow bays and deep main lake structure over the course of a season, since switching modes beats owning two separate transducers for two different kinds of water.

4 Mistakes I See When Boats Get Rigged

Most of the electronics problems that land on the service bench aren’t really about the electronics themselves. They trace back to how the initial rig was planned, or wasn’t planned, before anything got mounted. I see the same handful of mistakes repeat across otherwise very different boats, and these four come up often enough that I think they’re worth calling out directly rather than leaving them implied in the sections above.

#1 Buying the Unit Before Planning the Wiring

It’s tempting to buy the combo unit or trolling motor first and figure out wiring later, but that order tends to produce a messier install and sometimes an undersized wiring run for what actually gets connected. Planning battery placement, wire gauge, and run length before the purchase means the unit goes in clean the first time instead of getting patched around existing wiring that wasn’t sized for it. I’d rather spend twenty minutes sketching out where power and data cables need to run than spend an afternoon later pulling a panel apart to fix a run that was guessed at.

#2 Skipping the Transducer Conversation

As covered above, this is the piece most likely to get treated as an afterthought, and it’s also the piece most likely to cause a “why isn’t my fish finder working right” call afterward. A few extra minutes deciding on mount location and angle during the initial rig avoids a lot of second-guessing later. Most of the time when somebody brings a boat in convinced the fish finder itself is faulty, the unit is fine and the mount is the actual problem, which means the fix is quicker and cheaper than the customer expected going in.

#3 Overloading One Battery Bank

Running the fish finder, livewell aerator, and trolling motor off a single battery without separating cranking power from accessory power is a common shortcut that causes problems later in the season, usually as dimming electronics or a battery that won’t hold a charge as long as it should. Separating banks by function during the initial rig, even if it means one extra battery, avoids most of this. It also protects against the worst-case version of this mistake, a dead cranking battery at the end of a long day because accessories drew it down faster than expected.

#4 Leaving GPS and Mapping Off the Priority List

Some people still treat GPS and mapping as an upgrade for later rather than part of the base rig, usually because they’re focused on sonar and fish-finding features first. As I said earlier in this article, most combo units bundle GPS in already, so this is less often a separate cost decision than a reminder to make the combo unit itself a priority rather than an afterthought. The people who skip this tend to be the ones who call back later once they’ve spent a season without saved waypoints, wishing they’d had the mapping side working from the first trip out.

What People Usually Get Wrong

The single biggest misunderstanding I run into is the idea that more electronics automatically means a better-rigged boat. It doesn’t. A boat with a well-planned combo unit, a properly wired VHF, and a transducer mounted correctly will outperform a boat crammed with add-ons wired together on whatever battery had room left. Priority and planning matter more than the total number of devices bolted to the dash.

I’ve seen boats come in with three separate displays fighting for space at the helm and wiring run in whatever direction was easiest at the time, and the owner still can’t get a clean sonar reading because nothing was planned as a system. Meanwhile a simpler rig with one good combo unit, a properly grounded transducer, and clean dedicated wiring outperforms it every time. Building toward a plan beats buying toward a feature list.

Need Professional Service?

If someone’s rigging a new boat, or new-to-them boat, and wants help sorting out priority, wiring, and mounting before anything gets bolted down, that’s a conversation I have on the bench regularly and I’m glad to have it. Come by for a rigging consult, or give us a call first if it’s easier to talk through what’s already on the boat and what still needs to go in. We carry Humminbird electronics and Minn Kota trolling motors, and I can walk through what pairs well together on a new build.

Reach us at 705-253-7828, or come by 11 White Oak Drive East, Sault Ste. Marie, P6B 4J7. Bringing in a boat that’s already partly wired is fine too, plenty of the consults I do are figuring out what’s already there before deciding what still needs to go in.

Bottom Line

A new rig doesn’t need everything at once. Start with the combo unit and GPS, add a VHF radio, then work through livewell aerators, trolling motor electronics, and transducer placement based on how the boat actually gets used. Get the order and the wiring right the first time and the rest of the season goes a lot smoother. Most of what separates a rig that works well from one that causes headaches all season comes down to planning before anything gets bolted down, not the specific brands chosen along the way.

Cody, marine and ATV bench at Reyco Marine, Sault Ste. Marie.