GPS Lake Cards

[Fishin'_Fever]

Hey everyone,

I am wondering how good of chips the Lowrance Fishing Hot Spots maps are? I live in Iowa, but fish in Northeast South Dakota and all over Minnesota. I would like to have contours and good reliable data for several lakes in these regions. This seems to be the only card that covers all these regions. I've researched it online a lot, but I always value actual users opinions over some of that stuff. Has anyone used this card or have an opinion on a different card for someone like me to use?

Thanks!!

[Esox_Magnum]

I run Navionics for IA,SD and MN.

[fishingalex]

Fishing only in Minnesota, I run with the 2008 LakeMaster ($99) and the 2009 Navionics ($129). It seems like the LakeMaster is a little more accurate on its 1 footers but the Navionics chip has a lot of lakes in the 1 foot contour that LakeMaster doesn't. The Navionics chip is a 5 state chip (SD, ND, IA, MN, WI) with Lake of the Woods included. For LakeMaster, Lake of the Woods is a separate chip. If I had to pick one, I would look at the line up and select the one with lakes that you fish. I use LakeMaster on the big name common lakes and Navionics on the lesser common lakes. An example in the Alexandria area is that LakeMaster has Minnewaska and the chain of lakes (not Victoria) while Navionics has Victoria, Mill, Maple, Mina, and Reno in 1 foot contours.

[NCLaker]

I also have both: 07 Lakemaster MN, and 08 Navionics and use both - I agree with fishingalex's comments. I use them in my Lowrance ExpiditionC (same as H20c plus some extras).

The advantages of the Navionics have been mentioned, but I have found it to have some drawbacks that I have found compared to the Lakemaster:

- Doesn't zoom in nearly as close (I think it is 1/8 mile), this tends to me more important for ice fishing to pinpoint your spots.

- Refresh rate can be painfully slow when manually scrolling around on the map

- LM does better for street/road information

- You have to manually select regions of the state you are in from a menu - It is not always obvious what region applies to specific lakes (can be annoying).

Despite the drawbacks, I still use it for situations that the LM chip does not suffice.

[PerchJerker]

Good comments made already. Both LakeMaster and Navionics are FAR superior to Lowrance FHS. The best thing to do is to check each list of lakes for the lakes that you fish the most, each companies HSOforum has the lake list on it.