lewbeachbob wrote:
Wow, an incredible set up.... A few questions that I can't find the answers for...
1. How did you run your transducer cable and power supply wires to the fishfinder? I love the idea of the mast mounted ram base in order to avoid drilling into the kayak. Do the wires run thru the top of the Ram mount?
2. What type of water are you fishing in? It appears that you might have had a close call or two with motorized vessels based on the amount of reflective tape on your OB.
Thanks for posting your set up. I have just gotten the OB and had been fishing out of an Ocean Kayak Big Game Prowler. I am not at all familiar with the Ram mounts, having used Scottys on the previous yak. Your photos were extremely helpful.
1) Transducer is mounted on a folding arm bolted on the "table" .... the folding arm came from "The Liberator" by mad frog gear,
http://www.madfroggear.com/liberator/liberator.html so it folds out/down and transducer goes in the water.... but you could easily make your own folding arm with a thin metal stick so there isn't much resistance in the water while traveling, or a thin plastic or metal pipe/conduit.. The wiring from transducer to FF is coiled and inserted below the "table". For batteries I have a yellow drybox with two-8-cell AA battery holders (one for FF, other for GPS, so the built-in rechargeable GPS battery doesn't get run down, since I also use it in my car in auto mode)screwed to the table on the front left side in the picture .... but also I have a 12AH 12volt battery in a soft insulated bag (yellow, of course) as backup, and to run underwater lights. I used one of those foam cartopper pads strapped under the table and that holds the coil of wire, and adds floatation if needed. Also handy to poke a lure's hook into if needed etc. The whole table, with transducer, FF GPS, batteries etc goes in the car trunk/backseat, or comes inside the house with me when not in the water.
(GPS is Garmin Nuvi 500 waterproof to get to the ramp in the car, then switch to Boating mode, with underwater lake countour maps and waypoints to brushpiles/structure all loaded in .... until I get back in the car and switch to car mode to get home again ... built-in battery is supposed to last 8 hours, but I use the car cord in car and kayak, and save the built-in as backup to get back to the ramp from the water if needed, so far the AAs haven't run down yet though)
Deer feeder battery could be strapped/drybox mounted to table too ..., you could screw marine grade velcro down and mount it, or screw drybox to table holding a deer feeder battery, but I used AA batteries in a drybox
"The Liberator" by mad frog gear, is basically cutting board table with folding transducer arm, to mount the transducer on, I found the table to be too small for what I wanted to do, and replaced their table portion with a larger cutting board "table" from WalMart (under $10.00) which could be cut to size/shape I wanted.
below is how I had it all crammed on "the Liberator" on my previous kayak's setup
Below someone made their own folding arm; dunno where-what batteries they used, though
2) Mostly I'm in the Texas Highland Lakes, a chain of 7 lakes of various types, some constant level, some aren't, some resorts-overpopulated/some really secluded, all connected by Colorado river. Lake Marble falls is only 5 miles long and you could swim across it, but overpopulated/plagued by crazy powerboaters not paying attention, S-shaped so always a quick place to go no matter what the wind direction is it's always calm water somewhere there. They have speedboat races once a year with those 200 mph boats and so kids try to play too much there and I want to be seen instead of run over ....
Another lake I go on in that chain is 23,000 acres, a huge lake, maybe 1 or 2 boats on the entire lake sometimes, and I want to be seen easily to be found if I turn up missing on it. That huge lake can be rougher than surf launching some days. Got to watch the wind advisory flags they put out up there.
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