Deeper arm to make your fishing flexible

by Robbie Alexander •

I did a product review on one of Deeper’s other products recently – the Deeper unit. The Deeper unit is a portable and convenient fish finder, or sonar device. It’s a small round ball, even smaller than a tennis ball, that can be cast out from the bank or boat. Inside the ball is a fish finder transducer, which records a sonar reading from underneath it, just like many other fish finders.

What makes Deeper unique is that it has Bluetooth and sends a signal back to your mobile phone, which acts as the screen of your fish finder. Instead of having a transducer attached to the back of your boat with a cable running from that transducer to a screen on your boat seat, with another cable running to a battery to operate it, the Deeper Unit has the battery built in and sends the signal to you. This tech is the ultimate in convenience for shore-based fishers. Now with the addition of a Flexible Arm, it’s a step up for kayak and boat fishers too.

Let’s go into more detail about the Flexible Arm – not since coloured television came to Lithuania has there been a more basic, yet convenient product on the market. Seriously, the product development team at Deeper have got convenience and quality totally figured out. You may have read my review on the Deeper Pro+ unit, which I use, and this review is an expansion of that review. The Deeper Flexible Arm is designed to make using the Deeper unit possible for boat and kayak anglers.

Screw the other end of the Deeper Flexible Arm into the Deeper unit. Finally, use the clamp to attach the Flexible Arm to the kayak and you’re ready to go. This is the assembled Deeper Flexible Arm.

Firstly you need to screw the Deeper Flexible Arm into the clamp. Then you can bend the Flexible Arm to roughly the position it will be sitting in. You can adjust it again later to get it exactly how you want it.

Fishing from his kayak with a Deeper Flexible Arm, the author found some lovely structure just in front of his kayak at the top end of a sand bar. It was 8ft deep with large logs – ideal for Murray cod.

The Deeper Pro+ is at the forefront of fishfinder technology – convenience at its best.

The clamp holds the Flexible Arm and attaches to the boat – it’s simple and easy for anybody to use.

The Deeper Flexible Arm and Deeper unit hooked up and sitting nicely in the water. This can be detached from the kayak in a matter of seconds.

Firstly, the Deeper Flexible Arm comes in a package with two parts, the arm and the clamp. The third part of the assembly is the Deeper unit itself which simply screws on to the end of the Flexible Arm. The Flexible Arm also comes with a lightweight, yet strong lanyard for securing your Deeper unit to your boat or kayak.

To assemble your Deeper Flexible Arm, screw one end of the arm into the clamp. There are two different holes in the clamp, so choose the one that fits. Before you do that, be sure to slide the small part of the lanyard onto the arm, so that when you have attached the clamp, it’s unable to slip off. Once you’ve attached your lanyard and screwed the clamp on, you simply screw your Deeper unit onto the other end of the Flexible Arm. By this stage, the three pieces are assembled into one and ready to attach to your kayak.

Find a spot that suits you and add the arm to your kayak. To do this, use the handle on the clamp to wind the clamp open and closed. Select a spot on your kayak that suits you best, place the clamp there and tighten it up. Then it’s on and ready to go. Once it’s ready, attach the long end of the safety lanyard to your kayak somewhere and then clip it to the short end, which is already on the Flexible Arm.

That’s a description of the lanyard, and a step by step guide to the installation of the Deeper Flexible Arm, but what about the quality? In sticking with Deeper tradition, the Deeper Flexible Arm has been made to the stringent quality standards that many European companies are renowned for. Just like the Deeper unit itself, the Flexible Arm is built tough. I have bent mine, twisted it, and really put it through its paces, without any quality concerns at all.

The Deeper Flexible Arm is designed to bend, hence the name flexible, and can be quite firm when you try and bend it into place. This is a good thing, because if it was too easy to bend into place, it would self-adjust and end up sitting too deep in the water, or out of the water. The pressure required to bend the arm into position is about perfect.

The reason the Deeper Flexible Arm needs to bend is because the Deeper unit needs to be sitting in the water, roughly 50% submerged. Now at 130kg (all muscle of course), I’m not a featherweight, so my kayak sits deeper in the water than others. If I get in my kayak and adjust the deeper to just how I need it, get out and my let best mate Sandy Hector get in, who weights 70kg, the Deeper unit will sit 10cm above the water and will turn off, as the unit needs to be wet to turn on.

By designing a Flexible Arm that can be adjusted easily, the Deeper unit can be quickly and conveniently adjusted to suit all situations without having to install fancy fittings in the hull of your kayak for transducers, wires and otherwise. The same Flexible Arm can be taken off one kayak and placed on another in a matter of seconds. Or, it can be placed on a boat where the Flexible Arm might need to be adjusted to lower the Deeper unit further. The Flexible Arm pretty much makes the entire Deeper unit more flexible, which is the pinnacle of convenience. What are the pros and cons?

Advantages
Quality – as more and more people come into contact with a Deeper unit for the first time, Deeper will quickly build up a reputation for the quality of their products. The ability to assemble and dismantle the Flexible Arm in a matter of seconds, as well as swap it from one kayak to another, or to a boat or a canoe, makes it one of the most convenient fishfinders in the world. It doesn’t matter whose boat, canoe or kayak you fish from, with the Flexible Arm you can take your own fish finder anywhere.

Also, the Deeper unit can be unscrewed from the Flexible Arm and attached to a fishing rod and cast out easily, enabling the user to get a visual of what is under water in the nearby vicinity instead of only under the boat. This is especially helpful in lakes! It’s even compact – the entire Flexible Arm, clamp and Deeper unit are very compact and can easily be stowed away in a backpack. It takes up little room in a boat or kayak and can be stored out of the way easily when it’s not being used.

Finally, the Deeper app can be downloaded onto your mobile phone at any time, regardless of whether you have a Deeper unit or not. It’s a fantastic way to keep a fishing log and mark your favourite fishing spots on your map. Go ahead and download it, as I’m sure you’ll be impressed with the app.

Disadvantages
Probably the biggest problem, which isn’t Deeper’s fault, is that all kayaks are designed differently. Some have more places to secure the Deeper than others, and on some models it may get in the way when paddling. With certain kayaks you may wish to secure the Flexible Arm behind the seat and out of the road, but not all kayaks have this option.

On the plus side, this can be overcome easily by unscrewing the clamp and sitting the Flexible Arm in the kayak while you are paddling, or even just by adjusting the Flexible Arm, so that it sits a lot more flush with your kayak and out of the road.

Conclusion
That’s it, folks. The Deeper Flexible Arm gets an enormous thumbs up from me. Built to a supreme European quality standard and providing the best in modern technology, with superior convenience, the Deeper Flexible Arm and Deeper unit combine to provide brilliance in the world of portable fishfinder technology.

For a video of my Deeper Pro+ unit in full operation, attached to my Flexible Arm, go to my YouTube channel at robbiefishing and look for my video called Kayak fishing for redfin perch with my Deeper Pro+ fish finder.