How high above the foot of the motor are you running your transducer , and does it matter or have a preferred height?
How high above the foot of the motor are you running your transducer , and does it matter or have a preferred height?
1990 374V Ranger Still kickin' bass after all these years
I've had mine for about a month. The mount that it came with has a band clamp that actually goes around the motor itself. The way the transducer connects to that mount puts the transducer in a fixed position. In this scenario, there's nothing that can be adjusted other than raising/lowering the trolling motor itself relative to the surface of the water. Seems to be working fine for me.
That’s what I’m asking how high or low do you run it???
I’d guess 18” or so below the water line to the center line of the prop shaft.
I got an Eagle Eye last Fall, and made a separate poll mount for the transducer. I can raise and lower the transducer in the water column, just as you could were it mounted to the trolling motor. From what I'm getting from your question, and your response to what Ray said, I take it that you're asking how high can you raise it and still have it work? If that's the case, then if it's mounted on your trolling motor, you can raise it as high as you can raise your trolling motor and still have it work for the conditions you're facing. If it's calm and you can get away with having your trolling motor raised. If it's windy and wavy, then you're going to have to have your trolling motor deeper in the water so it will still work for you.
I've ran mine as little as about 4" below the surface of the water, and it doesn't affect the imaging at all. In fact, raising it closer to the surface results in better imaging if you're looking into shallow water. Figure it this way .... you're not going to see anything shallower than the transducer is. You'll eventually be able to see something that is shallower than your transducer, because of the cone angle of the beam, but from my experience, something has to be about 40' away, before you'll see it on your screen. And if you're running the bait close to the surface and your transducer is 2' down, as the bait gets closer to the boat, you'll lose sight of it on your screen.
So the transducer mounts to the foot of the trolling motor not the shaft , like the more expensive ones do???
Twitch, yes. Here is a picture of the pole mount I made. The transducer is mounted to piece of 3" aluminum pipe that I cut down the middle.
pole mount.jpg
Twitch, I bought an Eagle Eye 9 Live over the winter. Like Bassbme, I also wound up making my own pole mount for it. First reason was that I wanted to be able to move it from the boat to the kayak and that wouldn't be possible if I had it mounted to the trolling motor. Second reason was that if you have it mounted to the trolling motor, you have no option but to have the transducer facing the direction that the trolling motor is facing. Having it on a separate mount allows me to face the transducer in whatever direction I want it while keeping the boat or kayak positioned or spot-locked. And because the Eagle Eye 9 Live transducer has only one array instead of the 3 that the more expensive units have, the cone angle is narrower. After messing around with it several times so far this year, I can tell you that it's not easy to keep your bait within the FFS beam even in pretty calm water. The slightest movement of the boat/kayak moves the location of where the beam is pointed and so you have to either turn the trolling motor (if it's mounted to the motor) or turn the pole in order to reposition the transducer to be back in line with your cast. If you would decide to get this unit and make your own pole, there is a lady who has an online business that makes adapters for mounting the transducer to. I purchased a couple items from her and they worked very well. Here is a link to the website, GG Fishing: https://ggfishing.com/collections/pole-mount. She also has instructional videos out there on how to create the pole mount using different methods.
To answer your original question, the mount attaches to the trolling motor foot, not the shaft. So if you are running the transducer mounted to the trolling motor foot, the depth will really depend on how deep you need to have the motor foot into the water. Obviously on windy days you'll have to run the trolling motor deeper and so the transducer may be a couple feet or more under the surface.
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