Garmin Releases New Upper Midwest Map

[MN Mike]

I've been emailing back and forth with Garmin's Lake Map team, yesterday they informed me that they have released a new product called Upper Midwest Fishing Guide.

Here's a little info from thier site.

Includes more than 9,500 lakes with bathymetric contours, including more than 500 lakes with extra detail, such as highly defined depth contours, detailed shoreline and bottom structure, plus up to 1 ft contours for many lakes.

Includes regional and state-wide road coverage to help you get to the water.

Allows you to search by lake or by city (using Basecamp™ software (DVD only) or your compatible device).

Includes Basecamp software (DVD only), which allows you to view and organize your maps, waypoints, routes and tracks between your chartplotter or GPS and your computer.

Coverage Map:

Garmin also let's you ' test drive ' the map to a certain extent with a interactive link you can click on and zoom in on lakes you're interested in.

Looks like a product with great coverage for the price they are asking compared to the Lakemaster product, I'm sure some lakes won't have the detail Lakemaster did......... yet but as time goes on, more will get added.

It's good to see we will have something to look forward to when the Lakemaster product has run out.

FYI: For those that are interested, Garmin says they cover Lake of the Woods, Rainy and Kabetogema in 1 foot contours.

Mike

[vman11]

Does anybody have any experience with the Upper Midwest Fishing Guide on a Garmin nuvi? I am looking to update my unit and prior to the $100 investment I wanted to be sure.

I plan on getting in touch with Garmin but wanted to hear if there were personal experiences.

Also, the interactive map on the HSOforum is in meters. Guessing that's just on the HSOforum and adopts the units on the actual device??

[mainbutter]

Got an eTrex20 for xmas and this map to go with it as an after x-mas gift.

I gotta say, the lake maps helped me find steep breaks on a few places I've ice fished this winter, and that's worked for putting fish on the ice!

[MN Mike]

vman,

If I get my Nuvi charged up tomorrow, I'll let you know. From past experience there was little difference from the Nuvi to regular handhelds. The Nuvi would zoom down to 80 feet, handhelds zoomed down 20 feet, that was probably your biggest difference.

One tip on the new Nuvi's, I was messing with a Nuvi 30 around Christmas time, they wanted to see the tracks, we did get the tracks to display but when it come to erasing them, you had to completely reset the unit, meaning you would lose your waypoints and any other info you had set into the device. There was some grumbling on the internet about that.

I'm not sure what model you have to get, to make sure you can erase your tracks without loosing everything but I would find out what that is. Hopefully they will fix that with an update.

The UMWFG does display in feet and not meters.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[schweady]

vman - I have the chip in my nuvi 255W right now. What Mike said about zoom levels, accuracy of depth line placements, and meters/feet was right on the money. If you have any other specific question about use in the nuvi, I'll give it a shot, too.

[schweady]

Hmm... When connecting my 62st handheld and my nuvi 255W to my Mac to check how the UMFG chip data showed up in BaseCamp, both of them said that there was a firmware update available... I hope this doesn't have anything to do with the "one chip-one unit" limit for the UMFG chip... Gonna do some research on that one before updating...

[schweady]

Gonna do some research on that one before updating...

I just now updated the firmware on my nuvi 255W from ver. 7.40 to 7.50 and my 62st from ver. 3.60 to 3.80. Then, I tested portability once again by swapping the chip between units and connecting to BaseCamp with the chip installed each time. No change was found in the unrestricted ability to freely use this chip in multiple units.

[skh]

Hey, although this maybe should be a new post I'd like to jump in here and see if one of you guys pick it up through Watched topics.

I just opened a Garmin 62stc yesterday to play with it, put in the also new Upper Midwest Fishing Guide chip to try to sort the whole thing out for my husband. Although I'm not real familiar with hand held units like this, initially it seemed pretty user friendly. Until I started looking for the fishing guide. The only way I could find anything was go Maps-Main menu-Setup map then scroll down to Select map where it asked to enable or disable, after the first time then of course it was enabled, but that's as far as I got. Will someone walk me through getting to it?

After much frustration I decided to go online and register the unit and check for updates as I already have an account and other units registered. The SN came up as already registered! I called Amazon as it was not supposed to be a refurb and they are sending another one, so now I'm wondering if maybe there is something wrong with this unit. It is stll making me crazy though and any reply here would be great! I went through the Garmin knowledge base and was about to call support but they are not open on the weekend.

[MN Mike]

SKH,

Another user was having similar issues as you describe, here's what they posted to fix it.

Fixed it. Crazy tech stuff. In the menu, under Marine, I set "fishing". Well for whatever reason, that took away all the details and contours. Set it to Nautical or Off and it works like a beauty.

Let us know if you have more questions.

Mike

[skh]

YES, that helped! Since I posted I downloaded Basecamp to my laptop and messed with it. It did eventually get the topo 100 and UMFG from the unit. I sorted it out to get to a local lake (in basecamp) marked the deepest spot as a waypoint and sent it to the unit. I disconnected the unit looked in the waypoints and it was there, but when I looked it was just a point on blank space. But then I see your post, and I had set it to fishing so changed it to off and now it is a LAKE! Hooray for you! So do we need to use Basecamp to plan our trips? I was imagining a program that you could access the lake maps on the go in the handheld unit, set a waypoint from underwater structure visible in the unit and go.

[skh]

Hey, still playing with it and nautical does seem to be easier to see. I've also figured out you can scroll around on the unit to other lakes, then zoom in and the detail appears. Thought I'd mention this before you post back how to do it. So, I may be making headway..but if someone would just write a quick post outlining exactly how they've found the way they prefer to use it for fishing I would appreciate it. Like do you use basecamp? It looks like now you can scroll around and set waypoints in the unit, but what do you find to be the easiest. Like I mentioned, I'm trying to sort this out for my husband and I'm thinking he owes me big time! Of course he's down on the lake...

[MN Mike]

I'm glad that helped, thank Boney for that one.......

You can create your waypoints right in the handheld too or basecamp, whichever you prefer. On my GPSMap60CSx I can just pan the map, put my arrow where I want on a contour line or structure and press the ENTER key, that should mark the point on the map where your arrow is at.

One tip on Basecamp, by default there is a field missing that I feel should be there, it dictates how much detail is shown in Basecamp when you have the UMWFG plugged in. Here's how you get that on, go to VIEW on the top, click on TOOLBARS and then make sure DETAIL LEVEL is checkmarked, now you will have that detail selection in the upper left corner just under FILE of your screen, I usually have mine set to HIGH or HIGHEST.

Another thing, you can also manage the amount of detail your handheld shows too, reason for this is to declutter your screen and also make the redrawing of your screen faster if need be. Here's how you can changed that.

[skh]

I did find the detail in the unit and had increased it, I will find it in Basecamp too. Now I'm wishing I didn't have to send this unit back but have to if I can't register it.

So, now I'm wondering how to switch back and forth between topo100 and the fishing guide as it seems to be on fishing guide now. Do you go in and enable/disable what you want as they are all enabled now? It might be on fishing guide because that's where I was in Basecamp.

In Basecamp it asks to set something, maybe mode, like Walking, Hiking, etc. What do you use for fishing or doesn't it really matter?

Bought this mostly for Lake of the Woods and I did scroll across the state up to it and looks like good detail to me.

[MN Mike]

Yes, you can go in and enable and disable maps, I usually leave the generic US Map up ( I believe that is the first one on the list ), that give you outlines of the states and maybe some road detail, then I disable all the other maps except the one I want to use.

So far I haven't messed with that Walking, Hiking and so on settings in Basecamp that much but just from what I have seen, it hasn't made a big impact on map detail.

Mike

[skh]

Had to get away from this yesterday, but want to thank you for all the help! I think I can make a go of it now, the device itself seems pretty easy, but I really was looking to like go to Maps, then select UMFG or topo or whatever and have it run. Still seems like some instruction could come with the software but I looked and found nothing. Thanks again.