How deep does my fishfinder need to be rated for?

I have to admit the whole idea of sitting in a kayak over 2000' of water blows my mind (and freaks me out a bit).

I do have a suggestion (probably stupid). What if you had a buoy and a pulley/carabiner. Then you could drop your line down and fish. When you hook a fish you might be able to hook the line on the pulley/carabiner and then pedal away from the buoy to pull the fish towards the surface. Then reel in while you quickly pedal back towards the buoy. This would require a Hobie but it seems like it might work - although the right angle at the pulley/carabiner may over stress the line. For this to work the friction of the buoy being pulled through the water would need to be greater than the line through the pulley/carabiner (maybe adding a drift chute would help). Once again, the odds of this working are slim but working in high tech I tend to prefer low tech solutions

Pdx,

Actually that's how we lift anchors with a power boat so the idea has merit. I think the only problem would be modifying the buoy to create additional drag since you have less power than a powerboat.

The 2000ft is as deep as I can probably access. The deepest it gets within a few miles of launch is about 800ft. The 1500 to 2000ft depth is accessible in 45 minutes or so run by powerboat.  We fish the shelf in 300ft that comes off those depths when we use a powerboat  These are in deep fjords.


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I have to admit the whole idea of sitting in a kayak over 2000' of water blows my mind (and freaks me out a bit). ...

You can drown just as easily in only 10 feet of water    I've seen depths on my DF of over 800 feet in Puget Sound.  The deepest chart sounding in central Puget Sound I've seen is 949 feet, mid-channel, 1.5nm off Boeing Creek. 

Islandson can correct me on this one, but I'm pretty sure you hit the 1000' foot mark about 100 yards offshore on Orote Pt on Guam. I know I was down at 150' while diving the Blue Hole, and I could see sharks swimming waaaay below me, and I was about 20 yards offshore at that point. That was cool. A few miles offshore from there you could hide Mt. Everest.

Islandson can correct me on this one, but I'm pretty sure you hit the 1000' foot mark about 100 yards offshore on Orote Pt on Guam. I know I was down at 150' while diving the Blue Hole, and I could see sharks swimming waaaay below me, and I was about 20 yards offshore at that point. That was cool. A few miles offshore from there you could hide Mt. Everest.

Yup give or take a hundred yards. Mt Everest is still short about 9000 ft. Guam sits at approximately 37000 thousand ft above the sea floor if I remember correctly.

I was talking with my brother that's back home a couple of days ago and he told me that the film maker James Cameron was heading to Guam to prepare for some record breaking solo sub dive in the Marianas Trench. I haven't looked up the details. I'm curious as to what depth he's trying to reach. I used to free dive up to 30 ft for 2.5 minutes spear fishing. It took a long time to get used to the pressure and equalizing. Can't imagine the pressures down a couple miles underwater.

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He is trying to go all the way down.

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Cameron is planning his deep dive within the month.

"...on Wednesday, James Cameron folded his 6-foot-2-inch frame into a 43-inch-wide capsule and plummeted, alone, down five miles in the New Britain Trench off Papua New Guinea. His feat, in a 24-foot-long craft dubbed the Deepsea Challenger, broke by a mile the world depth record for modern vehicles that a Japanese submersible had held. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/science/earth/james-cameron-prepares-to-dive-into-mariana-trench.html?_r=1