nt.number theory - Does the image of a p-adic Galois representation always lie in a finite extension?

I have been looking at Serre's conjecture and noticed that there are two conventions in the literature for a p-adic representation $rho:mbox{Gal}(bar{mathbb Q}/mathbb Q)to mbox{GL}(n,V).$ In some references (eg Serre's book on $ell$-adic representations), $V$ is a vector space over a finite extension of $mathbb Q_p$. However, in more recent papers (eg Buzzard, Diamond, Jarvis) $V$ is a vector space over $bar{mathbb Q_p}$. It is easy to show that the former definition is a special case of the latter, but I suspect, and would like to prove that they are actually the same. That is, I would like to show that the image of any any continuous Galois representation over $bar{mathbb{Q}_p}$ actually lies in a finite extension of $mathbb Q_p$.

Is this the case?

I think that a proof should use the fact that $G_{mathbb Q}$ is compact and that $bar{mathbb Q}_p$ is the union of finite extensions. I have tried to mimic the proof that $bar{mathbb Q}_p$ is not complete, but have not been able to find an appropriate Cauchy sequence in an arbitrary compact subgroup of GL($n,V$).

(This is my first question, so please feel free to edit if appropriate. Thanks!)