Technology sure is something!!!

[D.W. Verts]

You know, I haven't seen it mentioned I don't think, and that's the MAPPING. I learned more from my Garmin in two months than I'd known my whole life. The close contours showed me some things that I didn't have a clue about (YouTube video coming soon, sorry!)

Dale

[Steve81]

You know, I haven't seen it mentioned I don't think, and that's the MAPPING. I learned more from my Garmin in two months than I'd known my whole life. The close contours showed me some things that I didn't have a clue about (YouTube video coming soon, sorry!)

Dale

Mapping is huge! It's great for so many reasons. Obviously, it's useful to find some hidden gems but it greatly increases navigation. I fished a tournament on Lake Seminole once. That lake is basically just one giant stump field with a couple of boating lanes cut through it and some backwater canals that run for miles. Without GPS mapping, I would have been lost or dead!

It's also helpful to do scouting at home. Sometimes, when I am sitting in the boat at home and have just finished rigging rods, I'll fire up the graph and start looking at the map. This helps me sort of build a gameplan just before a trip or a tournament. I also have the Navionics app on my phone where i can do the exact same thing anywhere in the world.

[Steve81]

My power poles get use every time I go out. Now maybe they don't get used while I am actually fishing but they at least get a little work when I launch/load the boat when I'm by myself.

[coldfront]

You know, I haven't seen it mentioned I don't think, and that's the MAPPING. I learned more from my Garmin in two months than I'd known my whole life. The close contours showed me some things that I didn't have a clue about (YouTube video coming soon, sorry!)

Dale

dale, I'd LOVE to get into a deeper discussion about mapping.  about accuracy of the maps we get 'given'.  it helps to have made 'em and actually gone out on the water and checked 'em for accuracy.
1-foot contours can be no more accurate than 2-foot contours.  if the contours aren't in the right place to begin with.  and there's a whole 'thing' about how sonar works on increasing depth vs decreasing depth.  cones and ovals are interesting things

[D.W. Verts]

You know, I haven't seen it mentioned I don't think, and that's the MAPPING. I learned more from my Garmin in two months than I'd known my whole life. The close contours showed me some things that I didn't have a clue about (YouTube video coming soon, sorry!)

Dale

dale, I'd LOVE to get into a deeper discussion about mapping.  about accuracy of the maps we get 'given'.  it helps to have made 'em and actually gone out on the water and checked 'em for accuracy.
1-foot contours can be no more accurate than 2-foot contours.  if the contours aren't in the right place to begin with.  and there's a whole 'thing' about how sonar works on increasing depth vs decreasing depth.  cones and ovals are interesting things

There was a topic started here a few years ago that was to delve into all of that deeply, but it never took off. It does get complicated (this coming from a guy who never had a
graph on his boat last year and who triangulated several times to get on the right spot and who figured if he couldn't ouch bottom with his flippin' pole then that meant he was fishing deep). THAT guy.

Dale