fish finder transducer question

[breambob]

Hi all,
Ive ordered and am about to pick up my first kayak later this week and i decided at the last minute to get a cuda 300 finder with it as well. Now having never used a fish finder before this might be a stupid question:

does the display show a representation of what is under or in front or behind the kayak as if looking from the side? in other words if you identify fish arches or structure etc on the sounder display, which way do you cast? or does the image depend on the way you glue in the transducer? ie pointing forward or back

if it is dependant on the orientation of the sensor, how would you knowledgable people recommend orienting the transducer? forward to the bow or pointing it back towrd the stern?

thanks in advance for any help on this
Ross

[bilby]

Hi breambob,
You have two options, you can glue the transducer inside the hull, there are heaps of installs on here that have been done this way, basically you use some closed cell foam, which you cut out the trannys outline, fill the hole with some selleys allclear, push it in the all clear making sure there are no air bubbles. The second option is to transom mount the transducer, this is a little more tricky as you need to mount the transducer either on the rudder, or via an external bracket which you can hang over the side of the yak. Either way has its advantages, i would suggest an in hull installation, for the simplicity of it.
As for what you see, with the sounder on 200khz the sonar beam is a 20deg spread, so basically it is whats under the yak maybe 2 mtr each side, depending on the water depth, if you have a duel beam (which i don't think the cuta 300 has) it will use a 83 khz which is 60deg each side of the 200khz beam. so it can see more whats to your left of right of the yak. Fish arches are when the fish passes through the sonar beam, the signal goes weakest to strongest to weakest again, creating an arch, half arches are when a fish is only partially in the beam.
There are heaps of books and info on the net, so i suggest you check out whats best for you, then get the drill out and put holes in your new beast.
Cheers Bilby.

[Widsa]

G'day Ross.

Bilby has pretty much covered it.
In lamens terms, the sounder works by putting out a sound wave.
This sound wave is bounced back and read by the transducer.
Some sounders show fish differently, but most will show an arch or half arch like a boomerang.

You want the transducer to be pointing down, or as flat as possible.

As Bilby said, the in hull selly's all clear job is probably the easiest.

Good Luck,

Will

*Edit* read this http://www.clubmarine.com.au/internet/c ... +technical