Fish finder mounting. Thoughts or ideas needed

I'm going to be buying a fishing kayak in the new year and will be rigging it out with a bit of kit such as gps, fishfinder and the other bells and whistles that might come in handy during a day afloat. The fish finder is the reason i'm posting this. My dad has a small boat too and does not have any electrics and i was hoping i could use the fish finder i buy for use in both the small boat and the kayak. What i was thinking of doing was, making a mounting plate for the fish finder with a clamp on the side of it so it can be clipped in place to the side of boat or kayak. On this plate i will also have the battery box and fuse box that would sit ontop of the plate along side the fish finder. The wires will be run down through the middle of the plate and down a length of pvc pipe to the transducer which will be fixed to the bottom of the pvc pipe. It will end up looking somewhat like a small outboard motor that can be easily fixed in place and removed again with little effort and no messing with wires or changing power source. If anyone has any experience in something along the lines of this or if you think it would be a disaster, let me know please. It will take a bit of time and effort to construct so i'd like to know if i'd be wasting my time.

fish finders are relativly cheap buy two and fix them to the vessels permenantly have a look on ebay

I know a fish finder wouldn't break the bank, but ontop of a kayak, paddle, roof rack, anchor, pfd, rod holders, suitable clothing, etc. I wouldn't really have the money to splash out on 2 fish finders.

Hi Evann699,

One of your best options here is to purchase any of the Garmin 90 / 140 / 0r 160 fishfinders which come as standard with a transom mount transducer, bracket etc. These cost from €90/€115 to €180 approx'. With this you could purchase a Garmin portable mounting enclosure. This is a compact unit which could sit easily in your Kayak or boat and you can utilise the internal battery compartment for a set or 1.5v batterys or a small 12v battery.
It also comes with a suction cup transducer bracket, so you can swap the transducer from the boat to the Kayak. This portable unit costs about €50, but rember you will also need the batterys...Maplins or Radionics would have these.

The Garmin products are available from Marine Web Store Ireland ...www.marinewebstoreireland.com Go Luck with this.

PS, i have the Garmin FF140 fishfinder on my boat for about 6 years now and power it up with a 12volt 6 amp battery, which lasts a few weeks every time and the fishfinder has a voltage display, so you know when the battery is going low anyway.