Need advice on installing FF to tandem kayak?
 

Hey everyone,

I could use some advice for installing/mounting my new (and first) fish finder to my Malibu Kayaks Pro 2 Tandem. The fish finder to be installed is the Lowrance Mark-4 HDI and my current preference is shoot-thru-hull transducer mount. I expect that the Downscan Imaging will suffer, but my thought process is that I won't incur drag and I'll have an overall neater deck. If I understand HDI correctly I'll still have conventional sonar and that should pass through the hull well enough.

The challenge is I'd like to be able to use the fish finder in both a tandem and solo seating layout. My kayak gets used as a tandem more often than not, but it would be desirable to be able to still have the ability to use it when I'm paddling alone. For this reason I'm thinking that mounting the display on the large rectangular center hatch is my best bet, but I am open to suggestions. Here's what I'm working with:

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/j...psiuo04bud.jpg
In the tandem seating position I have the entire hatch to work with and the FF would be mounted near my feet

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/j...pswzdj429w.jpg
In the solo seating position the mount would be in between my legs and pretty damn close to the family jewels. To be fair maybe a little closer to my knees. =)

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/j...pskfwvue3p.jpg
The underside of the hatch gives a better of idea of what types of mounts can be used. I'm kicking around the idea of using a ram ball, gear track + ram ball, or even just the Lowrance bracket since it does seem to rotate and a full 360 degrees and wiring can come in from beneath if I'm not mistaken.

I figure if I leave enough slack in the wiring I can still open up the hatch if I needed to. The hatch can be installed in either direction so I could potentially turn it 180 degrees to put the FF closer to me in the tandem seating position. In a worst-case scenario I could get a new hatch and start over from scratch.

Any of you experienced guys willing to put in your two cents? I don't want to over look an obvious solution or end up putting my FF in a poor location due to my own inexperience!

Best regards,

Dave

I'm going to add to my question:

What would be the best wire cap to use to pass the transducer & power cables through the hull? There are technically 3 that need to pass through (power is two combined, transducer individual). It seems that some of the pass thrus cannot accommodate the large connector heads.

Need advice on installing FF to tandem kayak?
 

I like the 3 screw west marine wire caps. I would run the wires through and pull the power heads out first. Then you are only fighting the cables. Ive never had a problem getting a transducer cable and power cable through one wire cap.

Also as for the holes you drill in the hull, the plastic connectors may seem like they won't fit just finagle them and eventually they will go. Worst case scenario after you try that is slowly file around the outside of the hole until it just barely fits through.

Need advice on installing FF to tandem kayak?
 

And for the first couple questions,

To get full functionality of your hdi transducer, it should be in the water. Ive seen guys use sprinkler parts to go through a scupper hole and recess the puck flush with the bottom of the hull. Some kayaks are easier than others depending on shape. If I had a choice of mounts for the FF I would go with the short gear track rail and ram ball on gunwale. It will look cleaner and be out of your way.

If you do a search on here, some things should come up for the sprinkler rise transducer mounting.

If you are going to shoot thru the hull. Use plumbers putty to attach the transducer to the hull. Extremely easy to use, can be pulled off and repositioned in about 30 seconds with no problem.

Most fishfinder manufacturers have transducers capable of shooting through a kayak hull, but often they are not the transducers that come with the unit. Low end Lowrance transducers are not able to shoot through the hull. Check before you decide how to mount the transducer. Having the transducer sticking out the bottom of the kayak is not a good way to mount it IMO.

This is good to know. I'm not positive that it can be trusted, but the users manual that came my FF states it can shoot-thru. The Mark-4 HDI is a low-end Lowrance, but it's in the same family as the Elite-4 and I think I have heard of others doing shoot-thru transducer mounting with the Elite-4.

I could hypothetically use a ram ball wedge mount in the flush mount rod holder behind the front seat and use a transducer arm. I'm also interested in the magnetic transducer mounts which seem pretty cool. I wouldn't be opposed to using the scupper mount adapter (or sprinkler plumbing mod) so long as it's not a loading/unloading risk.

I'm learning a bunch from this thread, guys. Keep the knowledge coming!

Unfortunately my gunwales are rounded. I wanted to maybe mount to a ram ball adapter for my flush mount rod holder, but I think it would be in my paddle stroke when using the kayak solo. I might experiment with it anyway.

Some of the aluminum gear tracks rails are shaped to contour rounded gunwales.

Sounds like I might need to go into OEX and look at all the materials and see how I can put them to use, because that could be an option.

That is exactly what I would do.

cut drill glue
 

Pvc transducer bracket mounted with hose clamps on a Cobra fish & dive kayak mold stems ....glues and duck putty can pop loose over a period of time loading and unloading or dropping your kayak .
You can also get 3ins bolts and make a hanger bracket i made for a Malibu 2 kayak mounted from under side of hatch.I used mounting hardware that came with transducer.the transducer is mounted under my seat and free of drebis all of my fish storage is in front

I would advise taking it to OEX in Sunset Beach and have him install it for you. His install prices are very reasonable and then you're assured of a quality job. I've had him install 3 fishfinders for me over the years with no problems.

As for the shoot thru the hull comment, I have an old Eagle 350 that was in my Malubu Stealth 12 when I bought it and it worked great. Lowrance bought out Eagle and then they came out with the Mark 4 and Elite Series which is pretty much based on the Eagle 350 only in color instead of B/W.

I've since upgraded to an Eite 4 HDI and it worked fine until the I started having transducer issues, (nothing related to the installation or shooting thru the hull, just a bad transducer).

How did the downscan work?

I found this article last night:

http://www.kayakfishingmagazine.net/...mystified.html

I'm still considering a ram transducer arm though...

Worked great, no problems. The only thing was that the water temperature reading was probably a little off as the transducer wasn't touching water, but I got a good reading on the depth as well as being able to mark fish.