ice fishin sonars

[road]

Now that ought to get theattention of at least a few here. Since I am new to ice fishing (1st full year at it and not much ice). I have used my sonar but it was a hassle to take to the ice and set up. So I made a tool box conversion for the sonar.

I now can take it to the ice carring everything inside (except the transducer) in a nice compact fashion. It takes seconds to set up and be fishing with. I have had several comments on it and suggested that I market it. It only cost a few dollars to make (if you have an extra toolbox) and is why functional.



Question do you guys think there is really a marrket for something like this? Would any of you buy one? (It is not for sale, that was just a marketing question) If so how much would you be willing to pay? Would you want plans to build your own? Or would you want one already to go?

Geezz I must have to much time on my hands! But this was fun to build and works beter than I ever thought it would. If any of you here are interested PM me and I'll send ya a pic.
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[Patrick_r]

I don't think I would be too interested in buying one since I've already got one, but there is probably some market. I've seen one before that looked like it would work pretty good, but it didn't have a lid on it, which I consider a drawback.

By the way, how did you put the transducer in the hole? A "T" post?



Patrick
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[road]

Hi patrick,

The bottom is all pvc and jointed. It is glued at all the corners and there is an offset with a T going up. (this T is not glued so you can adjust it if necessary) there is another section of pipe and an elbow facing outward. To this there is a plumbers fitting so that another piece of PVC pipe can be fitted through it and the transducer attached to the bottom of this pipe. It allows you to extend the transducer down into the water, depending on the thickness of the ice. Maybe i should take a picture of it and post it. The fitting allows you to tighten or losen the transducer pipe to hole it in place. Because not every thing is glued (all the important things are) you can adjust height, depth, side to side and forward or backward depending on ice conditions on the lake.
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[RipNLips]

One of the best home made rigs I've seen started off with a 5 quart (6-pack) Coleman cooler with a [size 1]reversible[/size] lid. The fishfinder was mounted to the underside of the [size 1]reversible[/size] lid so all you had to do was rotate and reverse the lid to get the fishfinder out of and on top of the cooler. The battery was velcroed inside the cooler on the bottom. The transducer was a plumb bob style suspended by its own cable so you just dangled it over the edge of the ice hole and could set the cooler anywhere the cable would reach to. The only divantage to the plumb bob style transducer is that you can't angle it off to the side very easy. It pretty much looks straight down. Still, the entire thing packed up easy in the cooler and set up easy when you got to where you were going.
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