Seek Tips on Rigging an Amateur Sonar System

Modern colour-display "Fish-finder" sets give quite extraordinary detail, with practice at setting and interpreting, and as with most consumer electronics you would be hard-pressed to build something equivalent at five times the cost. It seems that the solution to your problem is readily available off-the-shelf... The senders for these sets can be transom-hung, making the whole apparatus portable.

The off shelf sonars are extremely good at finding fish and other underwater structures. But the important thing is water depth, as each system has it's own limitations. The resolution and beam width vary depending upon individual manufacturers target market. Find the maximum depth you will be searching in and contact several retailers and compare their recommendations. Having a unit that will interface with a GPS unit with a high number of position markers would be a benefit so you could return to each individual target. If it is within your budget, a scanning type of sonar will yield the best resolution. Your next trick is to get them out of the water. Happy hunting! (FYI- I am a former Sonar Tech- USN)