The Garmin Spy Pole Just Changed Fishing Forever
If you've ever wished your LiveScope could look somewhere your trolling motor isn't pointed — your wish just came true.
Garmin dropped one of the most talked-about products at the 2026 Bassmaster Classic, and it's not a new chartplotter or a flashier screen. It's a motorized pole. A very, very smart motorized pole.
Meet the Garmin Spy™ Pole — a revolutionary motorized sonar mount that gives you full, independent control of your LiveScope and the all-new GT360UHD transducer, completely separate from your trolling motor. It's the kind of product that makes you think: why didn't this exist sooner?
The Problem It Solves
Any serious live-sonar angler knows the frustration. You've got your trolling motor locked on a waypoint, you're dialed in on a brush pile — and you want to swing your LiveScope 90 degrees to check that rockpile 30 feet to your left. But to do that, you have to break anchor lock, turn the motor, and now you've moved off your fish.
Until now, your LiveScope was a passenger going wherever your trolling motor went. The Spy Pole gives it a seat at the wheel.
What It Is
The Spy Pole is a 42" or 49" motorized pole mount that attaches to your Force® or Force® Pro trolling motor — or mounts directly to your boat's gunnel with an optional deck mount. It holds your LiveScope transducer (compatible with LVS32, LVS34, and LVS62) and the new GT360UHD, letting you rotate and position your sonar independently of everything else on the boat.
Control is fully wireless. Out of the box, you get:
- A low-profile foot control so you can reposition sonar without ever lifting a hand off your rod
- A gesture remote that mounts right on your rod — a twist of the wrist or press of a button moves the pole
- Integration with a compatible Garmin chartplotter via a dedicated on-screen control bar
- Cables route through the pole shaft, keeping everything clean and protected
The Smart Modes: SpyLock, SpyScan, and SpyLink
This is where the Spy Pole gets genuinely impressive.
SpyLock™ lets you lock your LiveScope on a fixed point of interest — a brush pile, a dock piling, a rock mound — and hold it there. Move your boat, reposition, work the area. Your sonar stays exactly where you want it, staring at the spot.
SpyScan™ puts the pole on autopilot. It sweeps back and forth automatically across any direction you choose, letting the system hunt for fish and structure while you focus on fishing. It's like having a sonar operator on board.
SpyLink™ is the integration play for Force trolling motor owners. It synchronizes the Spy Pole with the speed and direction of your Force or Force Pro motor, and lets you control sonar through your Force foot pedal — even while you're in anchor lock. That's a workflow that didn't exist before March 2026.
360 Degrees of Underwater Vision
Pair the Spy Pole with the new GT360UHD transducer and you unlock something completely new to the Garmin ecosystem: OneVü™ sonar — a bird's-eye view of everything around your boat in a 360-degree radius, in both 2D and 3D.
The system can scan and store an area the size of a football field in a continuously updated rolling buffer. You scan an area once, and you can fish it without constantly rescanning. The imagery stays locked to position thanks to True Motion technology, which integrates directly with GPS so your sonar map stays accurate even as your boat drifts or moves.
Add a LiveScope transducer to the mix and you get a live sonar overlay on top of the 360-degree image in 3D mode — seeing real-time fish movement layered onto detailed structure imagery, all on one display.
Pricing
- Spy Pole (42") — $1,999.99
- Spy Pole (49") — $2,199.99
- Spy Pole (42") + GT360UHD Bundle — $2,999.98
- Spy Pole (49") + GT360UHD Bundle — $3,199.98
The 42" pole is recommended for 50" Force or Force Pro motors; the 49" for 57" models.
Yes, it's a premium investment. But for tournament anglers and serious fishing enthusiasts, the ability to decouple sonar from motor position is a capability that simply didn't exist before — and that's worth something.
The Bottom Line
The Spy Pole isn't a gimmick. It's a genuine rethink of how live sonar gets deployed on a modern fishing boat. The combination of motorized control, smart targeting modes, 360-degree sonar integration, and hands-free wireless operation puts a level of sonar precision in anglers' hands that was previously out of reach.
As 2024 Bassmaster Classic Champion Justin Hamner put it: "Since the introduction of LiveScope, anglers have been dreaming of a way to control their LiveScope independently of their trolling motor. With Spy Pole, that's now possible, and you can even control your LiveScope while in anchor lock — that's a true game changer for the way I fish."
Hard to argue with that. Find yours below!