IceShanty.com's Ice Fishing Community
Alaska => Ice Fishing Alaska => Topic started by: groundsluice_pete on Feb 22, 2008, 07:47 PM
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I'm wondering how you other guys rig your boat fish finder transducers. I recently bought a Humminbird Piranha and mounted it on an old Eagle box which contains two 6v dry cells. Seems to work OK. I took a float from a non-functioning hand held fishfinder and looped the coax cable around it so I could drop the transducer down the hole a foot or so. The problem is, the depth numbers fluctuate. ???
So I'm wondering, how do you do it? I was thinking of mounting it on a crossed stick or something, but it sounds a little awkward to tote around.
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The unit I use has an ice mode which eliminates the top five feet to hide returns from the ice. You may need to lower your transducer to the bottom of the ice. Good Luck!!
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Yup, you need to lower your transducer and your problem should go away. :tipup:
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Thanks guys. What do you mount your transducers on, or do you just let them dangle?
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My unit has a jointed swing out arm that the transducer is dangeled by, works well. :tipup:
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You need to make sure it's level;
Try looking in the electronics section, I remember someone posting pictures of their setup. They took a piece of pvc pipe and mounted the boat ducer to it with a bolt, washer and lock nut and then zip tied the wire to it. They kept it in place by mounting it to a 2x4 with a hole drilled through the center and a clamp to vary the depth of the pvc pipe to get where it would need to be and I guess you could always put the 2x4 on it's side and forget the hole too.
It's hard to get it to stay level without this setup, especially at the bottom of the hole with our ice thickness but this will work for your situation. That's why your depth is fluctuating because of the level problem.
Goodluck
Brad
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I got mine on a piece of PVC. When the ice gets over a foot thick i just let it dangle below the ice and just subtract ice thickness from whatever the depth is reading. The PVC tends to kind of act as a weight and keeps the transducer pointing down.
Later
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Pete,
I did something like that years ago with an Eagle unit. I went with something quite similar to Campingfool's idea with my transom mount transducer. Then I found a trolling motor mount transducer or puck transducer and life was good! All I did was swap the transducers out, added a few heavy washer "inline" above the puck, and lowered it into the hole without skipping a beat! ;)
Since the wire is in the middle of the transducer, you won't have to constantly level your unit to get a reading. Your looking at around 60 bucks or so for a puck, but your unit would be "multifunctional!" ;)
http://www.humminbird.com/ (http://www.humminbird.com/)
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(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg320/martenpine/Febuary009.jpg)
He's my set up pete, works pretty well but the other day I almost buried the auger in the ice on watson it was so thick and I did get some marks from the ice on the screen. I may make an extension for real thick ice but otherwise this works well and is easy to pack on the sled
(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg320/martenpine/Febuary010.jpg)
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(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg320/martenpine/Febuary009.jpg)
He's my set up pete, works pretty well but the other day I almost buried the auger in the ice on watson it was so thick and I did get some marks from the ice on the screen. I may make an extension for real thick ice but otherwise this works well and is easy to pack on the sled
(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg320/martenpine/Febuary010.jpg)
Too cool. Guess I'll do something like that.
BTW, the new poles for the Quick Fish work well.
I went up to Island lake today, and my son only pulled up one char (a nice fat one) but it unhooked itself and fell back in the hole. Looks like nobody else was doing any better from what I saw... but what a beautiful day!
I thought about you hangin' out with the wife :->
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Martenpine WOW! I have one of those old ID units that I bought it back in 87 or so. Sure had caught a ton of fish with it over the years. However, I was never able to do was utilize it with thick ice... The transducer had to be under the ice lip, so it took some fumbling around with the ducer in order to get a read. What do you do when the ice is 4 ft.+ feet thick?
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I'm bolting a longer piece of lumber to the aluminum tranducer shaft. It reads Ok even if not under the ice lip but does it a disturbance signal that scrolls thru the screen if not all the way under the hole.