Depth/fish finders

[reelcatch]

I currantly have a depth and fish finder that is not working right. I want to replace it with a more currant model and something that will work well in the flats and rvers around the Aucilla. My son tells me that there are some that have bars and rocks in them with a chip for this area. I wondered if anyone had any ideas on what to look at. Keep in mind I am running a 16' G-3 with a 25hp motor so I am not looking to put more into this than the boat costs. Just something good for this area.

Thanks
Jim

[silverking]

Lowrance makes a good line of smaller sounder/plotter units and there are plenty of Garmin fans on this forum as well. Both have their own charting software that does a good job of identifying the hazards, shoals and other navigation concerns. If mounting space is an issue, you might want to concentrate your search on units with internal GPS antennas.

Boater's World and West Marine run regular sales on electronics. Check them out, but local marinas like Shields in St. Marks will typically match the sale prices of the chains.

[reelcatch]

Thanks will do, didn't know if anyone had a preferance of one over the other. This helps though.

[tin can]

Most of us use Garmin. Garmin used Mapsource Bluechart. It shows most everything out there.

[Seachaser]

Does your Garmin show the creeks real well? Mine shows up really good on the computer but not on my machine. And yes I have the mapsource loaded on my chip.

[Mook!]

Are you loading road maps as well as bluechart maps or using a pre-loaded chip? I have a dual-purpose Garmin unit and just realized last week that if I loaded the blue chart marine maps and added some of the coastal area land maps, the land map layer covered the bluechart maps around the coast and the creeks aren't on there (the St MArks river is even represented by just a thin solid black line), but they show up pretty decent when I had just the blue chart maps after deleting all the land maps. If ya got a pre-loaded chip though then *shrug* I dunno.

[Seachaser]

No, I do not have a pre loaded chip. Are you talking about Garmin's topo set or another map set? It shows the features great around St. George etc, but not around Icky/Aucillia area. For example: Hickory Mounds creeks do not even show up. Thanks for any help. Garmin could not help me on this one. They did not know about this area.

[EddieJoe]

I currantly have a depth and fish finder that is not working right. I want to replace it with a more currant model and something that will work well in the flats and rvers around the Aucilla. My son tells me that there are some that have bars and rocks in them with a chip for this area. I wondered if anyone had any ideas on what to look at. Keep in mind I am running a 16' G-3 with a 25hp motor so I am not looking to put more into this than the boat costs. Just something good for this area.

Thanks
Jim

If they are still available (just discontinued this year), a Garmin 498 Sounder (combo GPS plotter and sounder) would be perfect for your boat. The price has come way down because a new line is out, and it comes preloaded with the bluechart software. Be aware that it does NOT show every rock pile, just the major ones like gray mare. I have one and it has been excellent.

EJ

[Seachaser]

Mine shows rocks and stuff, but not the creeks.

[Mook!]

No, I do not have a pre loaded chip. Are you talking about Garmin's topo set or another map set? It shows the features great around St. George etc, but not around Icky/Aucillia area. For example: Hickory Mounds creeks do not even show up. Thanks for any help. Garmin could not help me on this one. They did not know about this area.

The land maps I'm talking about are the Mapsource road maps used for auotmobile navigation, not the topo maps. I don't fish east of Aucilla much, but in my reglar stomping grounds which run from about Oyster Bay to Aucilla (ok and maybe a mail or so east), most of the creeks show up pretty good on mine if I load ONLY the BlueChart maps and omit the coastal road maps.

Another consideration is that for the same area, there are navigation and fishing maps that use different unlock codes; I have the fishing maps. I still got the soundings and whatnot, but I"m missing channel markers up the major rivers and such. Maybe the creeks are part of the fishing maps but not the nav maps and you got the nav set? Only other thing I can suggest is make sure you selected all available maps for the area. For example I have to load about 4 or 5 maps to get all the detail for one small area from the St MArks Lighthouse to the Aucilla. They are nested within each other; The big one is the USCG chart that has the bay soundings and such, there are smaller ones within that that have the hazards, rock piles, pylons etc, and ones that are smaller still within those that I'll bet contain the creeks and such. I never paid much attention to which is which, but I do try and select ALL the maps in the area I'm wanting to load when using the map tool. The larger map boundaries are not even visible on the screen zoomed in to the level where I select the tiny ones, and vice versa.

**EDIT** I just opened BlueChart and a map of Hickory Mound management area from FWC - I can match up creek for creek on my Garmin map to the FWC map - although only a couple are named/labeled on the Garmin map. There are several exposed rock and oyster bars marked on the Garmin chart, all of which claim to be part of chart US11405

[Seachaser]

Wallah! It worked. I had been downloading all of the maps of the area at once like Garmin told me. By just downloading 11405, all of the creeks went in. Thanks for your time and help! See you on the water.