fishing with GPS

[DHD]

Trying to decide should I buy a fish finder and GPS together or buy the units separate ? Has anyone use the Garmin 60CS ?
Thanks

[Crusher23]

I don't have experience with the Garmin products but I would suggest seperate units if the wallet and console space permit having two units.

My .02


The Crusher

[REW]

I always suggest separate depth finder and GPS units for a couple of reasons.
1. Technology changes at different rates.
When a better depth finder comes along; or your needs change - upgrade or change the depth finder.

When the same thing happens for the GPs - change the gps.

2. Serviceability = If one of the units go down; you haven't lost everything. Lets say that you have lost your gps - due to an equipment malfunction. You go ahead and send it in; or buy a different unit. In the main time, you can still fish with the use of your depth finder.

The same thing is true, if you lose your depth finder. Assuming that you have good mapping on your gps, and or data points - you can use the gps to do your depth finding for you; since you how deep a particular charted spot is on your gps.

3. Uptime - with separte units, you have a much higher probability that one or both of your units will be up all the time.

4. Multi function.
I use my GPs unit all the time when ICE fishing, and I don't use the same depth finder for ice fishing that I use for open water fishing.

I also use my depth finder all the time for taking trips, or use it in the tow vehicle on the way to a new lake etc.

The separate units allow much greater versatility.

This is also one of the reasons that I won't buy a gps with a separate antenna. I want to have the gps unit self contained, so that I can use it in multiple vehicles/boats - friends vehicles or boats, without having to worry about moving the antenna.

Take care
REW

[Hawk Eye]

REW, I have an old Lowrance 350 that is acting up (it's six years old). This unit as you know is both a gps and a depth finder. If I buy separate units this time, what do you recommend? I fish out of a 22 ft boat, and can't mount a tv-screen sized finder on my dash by the way. I would probably spend about $350-500 on each unit. Thanks in advance for your response.

[REW]

Because of the wide availability of the software, I would tend to recommend one of the Garmin units for the GPS.
Lots of software developers for this product, and lots of maps available.

Choose the screen size and features and get the unit you want.

Any of the new depth finders out this year by Lowrance or Eagle have all proven to be doing a good job.
The units with a 480 X 480 give great resolution and have proven to work well.

In general, the units by Lowrance have the cold cathode lighting, which work out a bit better than indirect lighting ( typically used by Eagle) - for night viewing. So, if you are going to be using the units a lot at night, I would choose Lowrance, as compared to Eagle, simply because of the screen lighting. Other than that, the units are essentially identical.

Take care
REW

If you want to pay the money - you will like the clarity that you get with the color units. Of course you end up paying between 50 and 100 % more for color.

[Otter]

I would recommend separate units for all the reasons REW mentioned, plus I like to run split screen zoom on my sonar and that takes the whole screen.

[Rod Holder]

I am thinking about reconfiguring my own mapping GPS, so have been doing as much research as possible and listening to reports from different fellows. The Lowrance units and their nice color screens are easy to see but, there is a catch regarding their units: the Lowrance units will only overzoom down to 1/8th of a nautical mile. You might be wanting to stay over some underwater humps and end up off your chart. Jeff, from Navionics, did post the solution to using Lowrance units under another thread. Take a look at a Ramarine RC-435 except that it is more money than you want to spend. Overzoom down to 1/64th of a naut. mile. I am considering putting this on my boat so that I can get the availability of charts for inland lakes in Indiana and Michigan where I mostly fish. A person can do quite a bit of reading about mapping GPS units in the quest for enough knowledge to make an informaed and well thought out decision. I am not anti-Lowrance; I put an X-100C on the front of my boat to go with the 74# trolling motor with universal sonar this spring. My own reading began when I started investigating what I could do to be able to get charts for the lakes I fish and mark my own set of underwater humps.