Humminbird CS shoutout and SI ducer question

Been lurking for awhile here and looking to contribute more.

First a shoutout to Juanita and Daphne and the customer service team at Johnson Outdoors. That’s the main reason for my post I think good customer service deserves to be heard. I have the 798C SI and recently while on the ‘croix I hit a trifecta of 40mph boat speed, 20mph winds, and cruiser wake and lost my reading. Turns out that’s not too good for those little plastic tabs that prevent the SI ducer from kicking up. Humminbird sent me a new one no questions asked. What great service.

When replacing the new transducer hardware, how can I prevent this from happening again or worst from actually damaging the transducer? Is it really necessary to have a second ducer just for high speed reading? I was thinking of screwing down the third screw that prevents it from kicking up, but don’t want to if that means the next time this happens the break will just happen elsewhere. What do the rest of you SI users do?

D-Train,

Welcome. We look forward to reading and learning from your posts.

I have a thru-hull ducer that takes over at higher speeds and the “off the transom” SI ducer for low speed work. As for locking down the ducer bracket… I wouldn’t recommend that. You’ll hit something sooner or later and without the “kick up” functionality of the bracket you’re much more likely to damage or destroy the transducer completely. And they’re not cheap, as you well know.

As for the customer service kudos… I’ve heard nothing but good things about HB customer service. Maybe I can top that though… I’ve never had to call at any time for any reason after running HB on my last two boats.

Thanks for the welcome James.

Your response does help me confirm that the right thing may just be to have a dedicated high speed ducer. I actually think I have everything I need to do that but need to still accomodate my spare ducer as a portable for that once a year BWCA canoe trip.

I got a chance to try the hardware replacement on Mille Lacs Saturday night. It worked great, too bad the fish were a no show. I haven’t fished that lake any more than a dozen times but have never seen it so calm, maybe not a coincidence.