Upper Midwest Fishing Guide

[eyedr]

We are looking at getting my dad Garmins Upper midwest fishing guide for his Nuvi. It's touch screen made for a vehicle and I'm just curious is anyone as ever tried it on one of these units. how do you like upper midwest fishing guide in general?

[mainbutter]

I have the chip for my pocket garmin, it's great. I use it to find structure on new lakes, and hasn't failed to show me somewhere worth fishing on any new lake I've hit.

[schweady]

Garmin's UMFG chip is the best lake chip I've owned, and I've done 3-4 generations of both LakeMaster and Navionics in a Lowrance handheld. I was pretty bummed when my ExpeditionC quit locating satellites, and then right when I decided on Garmin, LakeMaster went exclusively Humminbird. Lo and behold, I found this chip and it's 10x better for the money than any of those old LM chips.

I have had it in both my Nuvi 255W car unit and my 62st handheld with no problems - plug-n-play. Excellent quality and unbelievable 7-state coverage on that little wafer of a chip.

[dfeste]

I've been running Garmin products for the last 5 or 6 years. This includes my handheld as well as two units on my boat. To the best of my knowledge the Upper Midwest Fishing Guide is what was formerly known as Lakemaster in a large bundle.

What I am saying is that the maps look identical when I have the UMWFG in one unit and the 2010 LM in the other. I don't know this for fact but I'd be willing to bet that Garmin simply purchased the Lake Master software from Johnson after they took over.

To answer the OPs question, yes, the Upper Midwest Fishing Guide is a great deal. In one chip you get maps for multiple states that used to all be sold individually. As an added bonus the cost is about the same as one of the chips cost when LakeMaster was selling them.

[MN Mike]

I have this chip as well, bought it shortly after it came out and just as the others have said, it's a great deal. I've run it in my Nuvi 205 and 1450LMT and it works very good.

Mike

[Stringerless!]

I have the chip in a Nuvi 1300. Ordered on line and got the chip without a single scrap of directions. Could not figure out how to get it on screen. Called Garmin and the lady said " You might be able to see a few depths with it since you are using an automotive unit " ?!?!?! A few depths ?? HSOforum I bought from said " Compatible with my unit " Now I might get a few depths ?? Anyway I went to youtube and watched a video that explained it all in 2 minutes. Unit works well except for battery life. Maybe I should have my kid write the review. I have not seen the thing since he laid his hands on it ! Never used any other maps so I have nothing to compare it to.

[MN Mike]

I have the chip in a Nuvi 1300. Ordered on line and got the chip without a single scrap of directions. Could not figure out how to get it on screen. Called Garmin and the lady said " You might be able to see a few depths with it since you are using an automotive unit " ?!?!?! A few depths ?? HSOforum I bought from said " Compatible with my unit " Now I might get a few depths ?? Anyway I went to youtube and watched a video that explained it all in 2 minutes. Unit works well except for battery life. Maybe I should have my kid write the review. I have not seen the thing since he laid his hands on it ! Never used any other maps so I have nothing to compare it to.

When using the Nuvis as a outdoor mapping device, there are 3 short comings in my opinion, NONE of these are an issue with the UMWFG itself, its a Nuvi thang.

1. Battery life is poor, but they are designed for incar navigation, plus they are not waterproof ( Nuvi 500 and 550's were the only ones waterproof, PLUS they had replaceable batteries with longer battery life )

2. Zoom is 80 feet with the Nuvi instead of 20 feet with a Garmin Handheld

3. Getting back to a waypoint is not as easy with a Nuvi as it is with a Garmin Handheld, they don't have the ' pointer ' that counts down foot by foot, with the Nuvi's you get about a 10 foot countdown and it usually doesn't 0 out, so you could go 10 feet beyond before you know it. The Nuvi 500 and 550's had this ' pointer ' option but they were the only ones and I believe have been discontinued.

Either way, none of these are a deal breaker, card still works fine, it will just work better in a Garmin handheld. It is nice to have the large screen for viewing depths and driving to them, I do get 1 foot contours with the Nuvi ( there are different detail settings in the Nuvi device ), I don't know why that lady would say what she did, must have been there for a paycheck rather than be helpful.

If you need an external power source, a 12v vex battery and a cig.lighter adapter runs a Nuvi for a couple days easy, if you hiking, biking or something, use it sparingly and keep the screen brightness down, that helps....... if you get it back

Mike

[schweady]

...the maps look identical when I have the UMWFG in one unit and the 2010 LM in the other. I don't know this for fact but I'd be willing to bet that Garmin simply purchased the Lake Master software from Johnson after they took over.

Actually, Garmin was savvy enough to purchase the LM data long before that and always copied it to their chips themselves. That was why the Garmin LM chip was always more expensive than the Lowrance chip. They never did trust LM to poke around in their proprietary chip technology, and owning that data paid off big time with the UMFG chip.

Some additional detail may be found in a thread from a year back. I'm sure you'll find most interesting the links to two lake lists in my Jan 25th post found there.

[newoodhntr]

There on sale on the garmin web site right now. Just got mine today.