Ok so I just installed a humminbird on my jonboat. got the transducer all screwed and rtv’d in. If im goin 5 mph or under works like a champ. Running any faster and it says im in 228 ft of water. one problem with this theory is i know the creeks on the stono arent that deep and my prop found lots of mud to prove it. What can I do to make it work at full speed?
Try adjusting the transducer slightly up and/or down. Also, try changing the tilt from front to back. If this doesn’t help you may have to remount the transducer either more toward the center of the boat or farther away from the center to avoid turbulence flowing under the transducer at higher speeds. You might also consider mounting the transducer inside the hull on the bottom of the boat.
like spoonmaster said, your transducer placement is off. Just mounted on a bracket at the transom I assume?
First make sure the bottom of the transducer sticks just below the bottom of the boat, them make sure it is level with the bottom of the boat. Try tilting the back end of the transducer down a notch at a time from level and see if that helps. You need the right side-to-side placement to really fine tune it for max high speed performance, but it won’t work well at all if the vertical placement or angle is off.
When I was experimenting w/ mine I made a temporary sacrificial mounting plate out of a piece of wood - aligned w/ bottom edge of hull, screwed that into the existing transducer mount holes, then I could use short wood screws to mount the trandsducer to the board to try different placements before committing to drilling new holes in the boat.
Angler 204 FX
Yamaha 150
excellent idea there i do believe ill try that!
I had one do the same thing in the GCR and found out it wasn’t snapped in place. When on plane the water pressure would push it out causeing it to think we were in some really deep water.
1720 KW 110 Johnson
16’ Bonito 65 Johnson
what did you have to do to fix it? wolfie what did you use to attach wood to boat. my transducer just has two tiny screws i dont think they would hold a board
The set up I had was a 14’ alumicraft. I hammered a piece of 1x4 down through one of the handles on the transom. My transducer was one of those that had a seam line around it which I lined up with the bottom of the boat. The bracket was designed to allow the transducer to pop out if it bumped into something. All I had to do was push it back down until it snapped back in place. Could you show us a picture of what you have and how it is setup?
1720 KW 110 Johnson
16’ Bonito 65 Johnson
quote:
Originally posted by sniper7what did you have to do to fix it? wolfie what did you use to attach wood to boat. my transducer just has two tiny screws i dont think they would hold a board
My transducer bracket has four holes that take pretty big screws (at least #10, maybe #12?) so I just used existing holes from a previous transducer install and a cheap pine 1x4. Then used shorter screws that just went into the wood but not all the way through.
sounds like your ducer has a totally different setup, and it’s going to be different on a jon boat but here’s how mine looks. You can see where a previous owner had a transducer mounted right by the drain plug, not an ideal location. There was also another set of holes that I used to mount the test board that I’ve since filled in. I could have moved it out/up a little more, but at the time I wasn’t sure where my trim tabs were going to go so I found the spot furthest inboard that still worked well.
Took me a while to get the 50 kHz working right (seems much more sensitive to orientation), but now I can easily hold the bottom at 30 mph in 200 ft w/ both the 50/200 kHz, that’s about the deepest I’ve had it. Inshore, no problems up to a max speed of ~45 mph. Lose it when backing due to prop wash, but I’m not too worried about that.
Most important thing with mine was getting the up/down position right, and then the tilt ■■■■■■■■■■. Took a lot of trial and error.
Angler 204 FX
Yamaha 150
Will post pics tomorrow but I also have a 14 aluminacraft. got a scrap piece of laminate flooring attached now and moved the ducer lower. It did much better tonight but not perfect
With my new boat in 2005, I used a scrap piece of composite board (plastic wood) mounted on my transom. As you did with the wood, I made it even with the bottom of the hull. That way I can change the transducer without ever putting more holes into the hull. I used 3M 5200 to mount the piece so those hole are sealed. So far the composite board has held up and the screws for the transducer are stable.
One problem I had with my Hummingbird (which was a long time ago) was that in very shallow water (under two or three foot) it would go to infinity or a very high reading. I’ve had much better luck with Lowrance until the HDS5.
17 Trophy-Merc 90