Fish Finder Help

[dsafety]

Originally Posted by Geoffkoop

Cool I figured it was just a rubber coating but with how sensitive to bubbles they are who knows. Now I'm debating dsafteys way of wet mount or just putting the damn thing in the water.

As I understand the way sonar devices work, they are tuned to transmit and receive sound through a medium that is a particular density. The rubber coating on the unit as well as the Goop, epoxy or the kayak shell are all about the same density as water so the equipment works as designed.

Air is much less dense so the signals passing through air get degraded. Other materials such as dirt, rocks, kelp and yes, even fish are more dense than water so the sound bounces off these objects and is returned to the sonar unit where the echos are decoded and shown on the screen.

Assuming that this explanation is correct, it just makes sense that the best fish finder images will come when your transducer signal is not degraded by air bubbles or other materials with densities that do not approximate water. Some fish finder units even let you tune the signal a bit. Mine has a setting for both fresh and salt water for example.

Bob