I just upgraded my gps and got a Lowrance 7 HDI. Now I have to get a map card and was wondering what some of you guys thought was the best one to get. I fish mainly the coastal waters of SC. All info in appreciated.
16ft High Tide
90 Yamaha
Wow thanks for all the replys
16ft High Tide
90 Yamaha
My lowrance came with card. Did you buy it online? did you pay for gold pack?
Is the HDI just a fish finder or is it a combo:question: If you are looking for coastal charts they should have come pre-loaded in the GPS.
Not necessarily. There are a bazillion different versions of each plotter and not all plotters have preloaded charts. Especially the elite series which is what I’m guessing meant, Elite 7 HDI? The Lowrance basemap without preloaded charts is horrible. Once upon a time I had a Lowrance. I used a navionics card, platinum I believe. It covered the entire US. That’s been quite a while back now though so I’m not sure if it’s even relevant anymore. I now have a Garmin with preloaded coastal charts. Probably get a g2 vision card eventually.
I have navionics and it does a very good job
18 ft Flats n Bay ----150 yamaha
Navionics also has an Android app for tablets that is killer, as good as my Humminbird but way lower cost. The HotMaps are on sale now for $119 on their website and include inshore to about 3 miles offshore. By far the Navionics is great… try the adroid app first or in addition to your Lowrance. I use the app to help plan future routes for my humminbird. I bought the Navionics “Marine and Lakes” for SC for just $99 and it’s fine for SC lakes and the in/nearshore.
update: Marine and Lakes is no longer a product, they want you to upgrade to Navionics+ for an added $99, probably worth it.
just fyi - I had to update/upgrade per Navionics my $99 Marine and Lakes (now defunct) to the Navionics+ which I guess is their latest main product, cost of $99 again. The Navionics card is only 2G. So, it only holds a few data files for any particular region. I think you can switch them around a bit if / when you travel to another area. If so it covers almost ALL of USA and Canada and is no less a product than the Gold version, so it appears to me. I use this in my Humminbird 898c HD SI unit and the maps are great. However, dealing with a bunch of waypoints is not easy with the Humminbird software for a PC. You better have a good working knowledge of text data, comma delimited files, lat/lon formats and of course the 12 character limit on displayed waypoints. Maybe the iconix stuff is better.