Funny enough I just was using this on my kayak on my trip to FL, this tiny thing works pretty good, it has a floaty on it so you can just throw it and float it on the water but it has a mount in case you wanna drill into your boat and mount it. I just used my scupper hole and ran the wire thru my kayak and it worked perfectly. I suggest just keeping extra batteries and mounting it in the middle or the front of you boat. Tight lines!

First you’re gonna need a valid id

If the bottom is non metalic, just put the probe inside the boat with a bit of water, the signal goes right through, no need to mount outside… between your feet. Try it!

A handheld sonar unit would probably be best.

https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/bass-pro-shops-outboard-motor-transducer-bracket For the transducer and maybe something like this https://store.vexilar.com/genz-blue-box-carrying-case.html for whatever locator you use

Following, I just picked up a lightning strike used, person before was using a transducer arm on the gear track, but I want to see if I can get the garmin striker 4 to fit in the plate area without too much trouble

I'm late to the conversation but I will post pics of my setup. I use the Garmin striker 4 on my Lightning. Works well but I don't need a big screen. I mainly use it for depth.

I have a striker 5 on my moken 10. Mounted and on a yakattack rail mount. I mounted the transducer through one of the scupper holes under my seat using 1inch PVC pipe and zip ties. Holding up well so far. No drilling.

I have the exact same kayak and fish finder. I used the Yak Attack Cell Block & Switchblade, a Noqua 10ah battery, and mounted the entire thing to my gear track. As a a bonus, the entire unit comes off in about 30 seconds.

https://preview.redd.it/iqd63zf8j60f1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=422de0708fef72e1ee22b2b71223aa3d0dd85fce

use the gear track for the fish finder, ull have to figure out something for the transducer, battery under your chair maybe

Ram ball track mount.

Captains bridge is an option too

Transducer/fish finder mount on rail. Nocua battery under your seat or Velcro it somewhere. Done.

Duct seal putty inside the hull

http://www.demonick.com/kayak/HMR/Battery.Transducer.Hull/HMR.Transducer.Putty.html

Inside the hull transducer. The plastic won’t affect the image. Air bubbles in the adhesive will, I think people use silicon caulking.

I have a tamarack and I mound in-hull with duct seal. Only down side is your transducer cannot measure water temperature.

In one of the scupper holes, not exposed to logs, sandbars, rocks or launch ramps.

I thought you had a really tiny kayak for a second.

A lot of it depends on how hard it is to run the sonar data cables and power cables. Cutting the hole is the easy part

I got a quote to flush mount a 7" chartplotter, run the cables, and mount the transducer for $750, not including the unit. A second shop quoted me $800.

I spent 30 minutes and just did it myself.

The biggest benefit in having a bow mounted graph is you can see it a lot better when you’re on the deck casting. Most people will attach the transducer to the trolling motor so you’re getting depth and side scan directly below you. The size of your screen matters depending on how you want to use your graph. If side scanning is important to you then a bigger graph will have more pixels which helps with resolution. If you just want it for navigation size isn’t that big of a deal.

Congrats on that boat, that’s an awesome heirloom. In my opinion, having a graph where you’re driving (console or tiller) is the most important. Having a second screen on the front casting deck is somewhere between a really nice luxury and a necessity for better boat control. You can get by without it, but it sure is nice to have. If you’re just running 2D/down imaging and side scan, not live scope, it’s hard to say for sure that an extra screen up front is actually going to catch you more fish. It’s more of a comfort thing knowing exactly where your boat is relative to the structure you’re fishing. If you’re going to run some kind of live scope, then don’t listen to me because I’m just running the basic stuff.

One thing you could consider as a more budget solution (I assume this would work with Hummingbird, it can definitely be done with Lowrance units which is what I run because it’s what came on my used boat) is you can look for a used helix screen without a transducer. You can then mount the 2nd screen on the bow, connect to the console screen with a NMEA Ethernet cable, and it will share maps, waypoints, and transducer info between units. So all the sonar and temperature data will be coming off your transom transducer, about 15 feet behind your front deck. When I’ve looked at “like-new” used Lowrance units I’ve seen 9” screens for $800. Pennies in the scheme of musky fishing.

If I were running birds, I think I would probably set up the bow with a 2nd screen + the mega 360 transducer and just hope my wife doesn’t look at the credit card statement that month.

My last 2 cents is if you’re not sure you want to blow the cash on a second unit, as hard as it is, it’s not a bad idea to wait to decide until you’ve been out on that boat fishing a few times. Figure out if you really prefer fishing off the front deck or if you like fishing from somewhere you can still see your console unit. You may find you don’t need a second unit at all, or you may feel like you can’t live without it. Will be hard to know until you’ve spent a day or two on the water making that rig yours.

I’ve always got my boys in the boat with me and one of them inevitably claims the front platform, so I never get to see that screen anyway. I fish off the side of the boat near the console unit and have to control the trolling motor with a remote (which is another way you could spend money to upgrade instead of, or in addition to a 2nd fish finder).

If his eyes are decent a Garmin striker 4 or the Minnkota equivalent would do most everything you need to do at a very affordable price. I use my front graph for depth and water temp, while having a larger graph up front is nicer you really don't need much unless you are doing a lot of deep water fishing using shared waypoints or using live scope. If you're getting a 7"+ get something that can share waypoints with your bow graph and has maps.

You already have a hummingbird so I'd stick with that. I'd get the mega SI helix 8 or 9

The issue is hummingbird is moving away from the helix to the explorer and you can't connect helix to explorer so definitely grab a helix while you can because you can hook the helixes together

People arguing about graphs all the time who's better who's not

If you like the helix you got and don't have any complaints just stick with them.

I’ve had a helix 7 at the back of my tiller for the past 3 years. I can rotate it on my ram mount when I’m at the front but that means I need to turn around to see. This year I’ve been looking for another to network for the front. I’d use it for following contours, depth while I’m up front casting.

Trolling motors are quiet to the ears, but their electrical output is "noisy" - they're just a big ol' motor, converting electrical energy into propulsion.

The fish finder, by contrast, is a device that listens really, really well. Listening (and visually displaying what it hears) is its whole purpose. Its electronics are sensitive to electrical noise.

For this reason, you don't want to power both the trolling motor and the fish finder from the same battery. If you run both from the same battery, the noise from the motor pollutes the signal the fish finder hears, and instead of seeing fish on your fish finder, you see the electrical signal from your trolling motor; I've personally been there and done that, and now use two batteries. A 12V, 10Ah (i.e., "12 volts, ten amp hours") battery is a good size for powering most fish finders; you can go as low as 7Ah, but 7Ah may not be enough power to run a fish finder for a full day of fishing.

Hope that helps get you started.

Updated to add: not affiliated, but this blog has some helpful fish finder installation tips

How do you like them? I'm literally about to buy the same setup for my new kayak. 55lb newport kayak trolling motor with striker 4 bundle kit (so that battery and everything comes together as a kit for the fishfinder).

Yak-power has some systems that you can run a splitter setup from a single battery. Not sure if they have a configuration for fish finder and a trolling motor.

https://yak-power.com/collections/complete-systems

You could power it from the same battery and use a line filter to filter out the electrical noise 👉

Not suggested, gonna need 2 batteries bro.

Or read directions on line

Moral of the story….even if you’re a guy, it’s okay to ask for directions, unless you like screwing with your friends 😂

One of the reasons I bought my boat was because not only the low hours but because I saw his tracks on the Simrad. Dude literally went to and from these 2 restaurants in his canal system for a few years and not really anywhere else. The boat was mint looking with no wallowed out hardware and everything still tight. Plotter helped prove to me that it wasnt dogged out, abused ect. I will say tho, the Yamaha 225 had 236 hours on it and was 14 years old. It had corrosion issues. Almost positive it was one of those "if you dont use it, you lose it" type things.