7 Best Garmin Fishfinders For Compact RV Boats That Nomads Swear By

You’ve finally found the perfect boondocking spot by a remote lake, the inflatable boat is pumped up, and the rods are ready. But dropping a line into unknown water is a game of chance. For nomads who treat the country’s waterways as their backyard, a fishfinder isn’t a luxury; it’s an essential tool for turning a guess into a plan. Choosing the right one for a compact, power-limited setup is the key to making the most of every stop.

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Choosing a Garmin for Your Compact RV Boat

When you’re dealing with a small boat—like an inflatable, a kayak, or a 12-foot jon boat—that has to be stored in or on your RV, every inch and every ounce matters. The same goes for your 12-volt power system. A massive 12-inch touchscreen might look great in a bass boat, but it’s an impractical power hog for a setup running off a small portable battery. Your decision has to be grounded in the reality of your space and energy budget.

The core tradeoff you’ll face is between simplicity and features. Garmin’s STRIKER series are pure fishfinders. They excel at showing you what’s below the water with incredible clarity, but they don’t have built-in, detailed maps. You can mark a waypoint where you caught a fish, but you’ll only see it as a dot on a blank screen.

The ECHOMAP series, on the other hand, are true chartplotters. They integrate detailed lake and coastal maps, letting you see your boat’s position relative to depth contours, channels, and navigational aids. This is a huge advantage in unfamiliar waters, but it comes at a higher cost and typically requires a bit more power and space. Your choice depends on whether you primarily need to find fish or navigate and find fish.

Garmin STRIKER Cast: Ultimate Portability

For the true minimalist, the STRIKER Cast is less a piece of equipment and more a capability you add to your phone. It’s a small, floatable sonar puck that you tie to a fishing line, cast out, and it streams sonar data directly to an app on your smartphone. There is no head unit to mount, no wires to run, and no dedicated battery to charge beyond your phone itself.

This is the perfect solution for the RVer with a packraft or an inflatable kayak. You can toss it in a tackle box and be ready to fish anywhere, from a high-mountain lake to a farm pond behind a Harvest Host. It gives you depth, water temperature, and a simple fish arch view, turning your phone into a functional, if basic, fishfinder.

The limitations are obvious but acceptable for the convenience. You’re draining your phone’s battery, and phone screens can be difficult to see in bright sunlight. It’s not for precision offshore angling, but for quickly understanding the depth and basic structure of a small body of water right from your campsite, its portability is unmatched.

Garmin STRIKER 4: The Classic Nomad’s Choice

The STRIKER 4 is the undisputed workhorse of the compact fishfinder world. For years, it has been the default choice for anyone needing reliable, simple sonar in a tiny package. Its 3.5-inch screen and small overall footprint make it incredibly easy to mount on a small transom or a kayak track and even easier to store in a crowded RV cabinet.

Its primary strength is its efficiency. The STRIKER 4 sips power, allowing you to run it all day on a small, lightweight lithium or sealed lead-acid battery without worry. It provides excellent traditional CHIRP sonar, which gives you clear target separation and crisp fish arches. It does exactly what a fishfinder is supposed to do: it finds fish and shows you the bottom contour.

Of course, there are no bells and whistles here. The screen is small, and as a STRIKER unit, it has no mapping capabilities beyond a basic waypoint plotter. But for thousands of nomads, that’s the point. It’s a rugged, reliable, and affordable tool that provides the essential information you need without the complexity or power demands of more advanced units.

Garmin STRIKER Vivid 4cv: Top Clarity & Color

Think of the STRIKER Vivid 4cv as the STRIKER 4’s much-improved sibling. It shares the same compact body and 3.5-inch screen, but adds two critical features: Vivid color palettes and ClearVü scanning sonar. The Vivid palettes aren’t just for looks; they use high-contrast color schemes that make it dramatically easier to distinguish fish from the bottom or submerged structure.

The "cv" for ClearVü is the real game-changer. This high-frequency sonar provides a nearly photographic image of what’s directly beneath your boat. Instead of interpreting an arch, you can clearly see the branches of a submerged tree, a pile of rocks, or even a school of baitfish. For anyone fishing around structure, this technology is invaluable for precise lure placement.

It maintains the small footprint and low power draw that makes the 4-series so popular with RVers. You get a significant upgrade in fish-finding technology without a major penalty in space or energy consumption. For a small increase in price over the base model, the Vivid 4cv delivers a massive leap in underwater clarity.

Garmin STRIKER Vivid 5cv: Larger View, Small Size

The STRIKER Vivid 5cv hits a sweet spot for many small boat anglers. It offers all the benefits of the 4cv—Vivid palettes and ClearVü sonar—but packages them with a larger 5-inch screen. That extra screen real estate makes a surprisingly big difference in usability, especially when you’re on the move.

The most practical advantage is running a split-screen view. On a 3.5-inch screen, showing traditional sonar alongside ClearVü makes both windows tiny and hard to read. On the 5-inch screen, it’s perfectly usable. You can watch for fish arches on your traditional sonar while simultaneously getting a clear picture of the structure below from ClearVü, giving you a much more complete understanding of your environment at a glance.

While still very compact, the 5-inch unit is noticeably larger than the 4-inch model. This is the main tradeoff. You have to decide if the improved visibility and split-screen functionality are worth the extra space the unit will occupy in your storage bay. For many, the answer is a resounding yes.

Garmin ECHOMAP UHD 63cv: Integrated Lake Maps

This is where we leave the world of simple fishfinders and enter the realm of true chartplotters. The ECHOMAP UHD 63cv is for the serious nomadic angler who frequently explores new and complex bodies of water. Its defining feature is the preloaded LakeVü g3 inland maps, which provide detailed 1-foot contours for thousands of lakes across the US.

Having built-in maps fundamentally changes how you fish. Instead of wandering around looking for a drop-off, you can study the chart, identify a promising underwater point or channel, and navigate directly to it. When you find a hot spot, you can save the waypoint on the actual map, making it easy to return to later. This saves an immense amount of time and fuel.

This capability comes with clear tradeoffs for the RVer. The 6-inch screen and more powerful processor require more power and a sturdier mounting solution. It’s less suited for a quick-release kayak mount and more at home on a small aluminum boat that stays on the RV’s roof rack. It’s an investment in efficiency for those who dedicate serious time to their fishing.

Garmin STRIKER Vivid 7sv: Affordable Side-Imaging

The STRIKER Vivid 7sv presents a unique value proposition: it gives you high-end sonar technology without the cost of a full chartplotter. The "sv" stands for SideVü, a side-scanning sonar that lets you see what’s out to the sides of your boat, not just what’s underneath it. This is a revolutionary tool for covering water quickly.

Imagine paddling down the center of a river channel. With SideVü, you can see the logs, rock piles, and fish holding near the bank 100 feet away on either side. It allows you to scan a huge area efficiently, building a mental map of the underwater landscape in a fraction of the time it would take with traditional sonar.

The key compromise is that it’s still a STRIKER unit, meaning it has no built-in maps. You get this incredible side-imaging view, but you can’t overlay it on a navigational chart. The 7-inch screen also represents a significant jump in size and power consumption, making it best suited for a more dedicated fishing craft, like a Gheenoe or jon boat, rather than a portable inflatable.

Garmin ECHOMAP UHD2 54cv: Premium Chartplotter

If you want a modern, full-featured chartplotter in a package that’s still manageable for a compact boat, the ECHOMAP UHD2 54cv is the answer. It combines the best of all worlds: a bright, high-resolution 5-inch keyed display, powerful UHD sonar, and built-in Garmin Navionics+ maps for both coastal and inland waters.

This unit brings premium features down to a smaller size. It includes Wi-Fi connectivity, which allows it to sync with the ActiveCaptain app on your phone for software updates, map downloads, and community data. The user interface is snappy and intuitive, making it a pleasure to use. It’s a professional-grade tool that doesn’t demand the space of a professional-grade console.

This is the top-tier choice for the RVer who is also a dedicated angler. It requires a solid 12v power source and a secure mount, but it delivers uncompromising performance. For those who want the best navigational and fish-finding data in a compact form factor, the UHD2 54cv is the new standard.

Ultimately, the best fishfinder for your RV boat is the one that aligns with your specific needs. It’s a balance between portability, power, and capability. Don’t get sold on features you won’t use; a simple STRIKER 4 that helps you find the drop-off is infinitely more valuable than a top-of-the-line chartplotter that’s too big and power-hungry to ever leave its storage box. Choose the tool that gets you on the water and makes your time there more successful.