I have a light bar on my boat. Its pretty low profile, but I will say, the BEST BEST THING I ever did was put a fish finder in my duckboat. No transducer hooked up to it, its there 100% for navigation reasons. Lowrance is what im comfortable with and I can lay down track lines. I also put down waypoints of hazards I see, when I see them. Before I run any lake, at the beginning of the season, I go run to all my holes in the daylight and lay down a track line. We all know how waters and channels change over the course of a summer. Light bars are great until its cold and theres fog. Ive made a 10 mile run, where my light bar was completely worthless because if I turned it on, the fog was so thick, it was blinding from the reflection. Ive run boats for almost 20 years now, and pretty comfortable in the dark. GPS on these fishfinders is BEYOND accurate anymore as well, and if you get a lakes chip for you fishfinder, you can see where the main channels, buoys and hazards were marked, on the chip, so you have an idea of where they might be on the lake, in the event you are running blind.
Truthfully, most of my lakes are 90% big lake runs and the last 10% where I get up in the channel of the river. The light bar really is only useful once I get in and around the river channels, or waters narrow. Ive got to the point, where most mornings, I run just my nav lights until I get to the river channel and then I turn my light bar on. You can see bank lines, trees, maybe the log you need to avoid etc. In big open water, you might see 50 feet in front of you on the clearest day, but I still wouldnt be without a light bar. I dont like the idea of having to hold something and run my mudmotor around tight turns etc. I need that one had on the grab bar to really handle that motor sometimes.
The longest run I have ever made in pitch black was from the farmington ramp at Navajo lake to the Colorado border. I was comfortable as I had made this run before, at the time, I didnt know my buddy was literally having a heart attack in the passenger seat as we cruised up there at 55 mph. All I had was navigation on my fishfinder. We got there, caught a couple hours of sleep and woke up and slayed smallmouth. You get oddly comfortable running in the pitch black when you have electronics you trust and have made the runs a few times in the daylight. He didnt admit his fear until the next morning and showed me the video he was taking lol.
