Re: Transducer in the Live Well? Why not?
Actually from what you have said it probably would work just fine at any speed if the live well were located differently in your boat - and maybe that tells you something.<br /><br />I suspect that its not working when underway now because the part of the boat that is directly under the live well/transducer mount is probably out of the water when you are under way an up on plane. Is there any reason why you can not simply mount the transducer directly to the bottom of the hull in the aft 1/3 of the hull? When mounted close to the transom there is generally no reason why they won't work up until any speed the boat will go if they are in-hull mounted as long as there are no bubble-makers ahead of the mounting point on the hull. By that I mean rivets, thru-hull fittings, strakes, whatever. Anything that would disturb the flow of water over the hull and particularly if it will create air bubbles will cause the transducer not to be able to function.<br /><br />As for aft mounting its really quite easy. Just dam up (modeling clay shaped like a donut) the area where you want to mount the transducer, pour the hole in the middle about half full of epoxy, and then set the transducer into it pointing down. Nothng to it. You need to make sure you don't over mix the epoxy and introduce air bubbles in it and you need to tilt the transducer face as you insert it into the pool of epoxy so no air is trapped under it, but that's about it for tricks. Oh, you probably already know that the only other requirement is that you be on a solid fiberglass bottom, no foam, nothing inbetween. Also, from time to time you'll see someone pipe in that you have to make sure the hull is not cored (where some lighter and less expensive material is sandwiched inbetween the layers of glass). In truth this is almost never a concern because there were almost no small (small enough that you could put it on a trailer) boats that have cored bottoms - some have cored sides to the hull, but almost none of them have any coreing in the bottom). At any rate its super easy to simply drill a small (3/8" is good) hole in the bottom and look. If its cored just break out the epoxy repair the hole and then move on but to be absolutly honest about it if the hull is less than about 26~28 feet there isn't much of a chance that its cored and I have never seen a boat below 23' that had a cored hull bottom.<br /><br />I think everyone should know this, the inability of a fish finder to work at speed is almost never the fault of the fish finder, its not likely to be the transducer either, its the transduer placement.
<br /><br />Won't work at all, probably just give ya some crazy false returns.... <br /><br />If your trying to install it to work as a "shoot thru" transducer, then it has to be mounted in such a way that there is absolutely no air in between the transducers face and the fiberglass, aluminum, or whatever surface it's being mounted to.. <br /><br />Transom mounts are so much easier..