By: Mark Romanack
The two boats currently being used for filming Fishing 411 TV episodes feature a wealth of marine electronics and accessories.
Like it or not modern fishing electronics require a host of different transducers. Our filming boats at Fishing 411 are routinely rigged with side-imaging, forward facing sonar and broad beam transducers and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We also mount transducers to get the most from our Fish Hawk sub-surface speed and temperature probe and to use the Bottom Track feature on our Cannon Downriggers. The back of a fishing boat is a busy place, besides a multitude of transducers, kicker motors, trim tabs and other popular accessories like the ZipWake chine interceptors must be mounted to the transom.
To say space at the back of the boat is at a premium would be a serious understatement. Managing all these accessories in such a way they can be easily mounted, adjusted as necessary while keeping the holes in the boat to a minimum is part of our serious boat rigging strategy.
The many products produced by RyTek Marine make boat rigging chores much easier. We highly recommend their Heavy Duty Transducer Mounting Boards. This accessories are thicker than the typical products made from starboard, which means you can use longer screws when securing the transducer to these boards. That may seem like a small matter, but the truth is transducers often must be moved several times before they provide the maximum performance. If the boards are thin and the screws are too small, the transducer will not securely mount to the transducer board. In time the transducer will work loose.
There is a lot going on at the transom of the author’s boat. Unique products made by RyTek Marine make it much easier to get the most from expensive marine electronics.
The second RyTek Marine product we highly recommend are their after market transducer mounting brackets. Every major manufacturer of marine electronics uses wimpy metal or plastic mounting brackets on their transducers. The RyTek Marine products are made from heavy duty stainless steel that will not bend or fail through hard use. Even better they make these brackets for literally every popular brand of marine electronics and all those associated transducers.
Thirdly, we have found that for pole mounting forward facing sonar transducers such as the Garmin Live Scope LVS34 the RyTek Marine pole adapters are the most adjustable and built to last. These FFS transducer brackets work with all the popular pole mounting systems.
While these kinds of marine products aren’t exactly sexy, they make the process of boat rigging a more professional experience. These RyTek Marine products also help insure that expensive marine electronics function as designed. In our minds, this is money well spent.