Looking to buy a new GPS/chart plotter soon. I mainly shrimp over bait but am looking to get into deep holing so I need something pretty good. I was looking at the Garmin Echomap 50DVUS or the Lowrance Elite 7 chirp or the hummingbird 859CIHD. I don’t currently fish much at the coast but a lot in my local lakes and I plan to start fishing the coastal areas. I plan to do a good bit of reconnaissance in the harbor area and around the Beaufort area and I definitely want topo maps of those areas in any GPS that I purchase. I’d love to hear recommendations from you folks.</font id=“Times New Roman”>
I am going to buy the Elite 4 Chirp… and from what I see from your post, that will do fine for you, unless you need the larger screen and other features… Although… you may gain navigation features that the 4 doesn’t have, I don’t remember. I have looked at SOoooo many this week.
What is your budget?
I’m willing to go up to around $800 - 1000 to get a something good. I’m not familiar with the coastal areas that I plan to start fishing and I don’t want to tear up a new boat learning oyster bars, mud flats, etc.
Thanks for the advise folks… </font id=“Times New Roman”>
961 War Eagle CC w/90 Yamaha
I just purchased an Elite 5 Chirp for my pontoon here on Lake Murray for $499 on line. Through the end of July there is a$100 rebate. It has many of the same features as my Gen 2 Touch HDS12 I have on my fishing boat just not as big a screen. The Elite 5 has down scan but not side scan. You really can’t go wrong with the elite series, just make sure whatever unit you get is a chirp unit.
Fishing is a prefectible art…in which nevertheless, no man is perfect – Gifford Pinchot
Key West Sportsman 1720
Ice Blue Pathfinder 2200
“Kemosabe”
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</font id=“Times New Roman”>Finally decided on the Lowrance Elite-7 Gold CHIRP Fishfinder/Chartplotter with 83/200 KHz and 455/800 KHz Transducer and Navionics Cartography. Not sure whether or not I’ll need to purchase additional navionics software for topo’s of the area but will see in the next couple of days when it arrives. Does anyone else have this unit that they could comment on? I may need to take a computer engineering class to learn how to operate this baby:smiley:
961 War Eagle CC w/90 Yamaha
I bought my E7 back when chirp was just something a bird does. It should be more than enough for what you are looking to do.It was fairly intuitive to me to figure out using it, but may not if you haven’t previously owned a lowrance unit. Hopefully their manual is better now. If youhave any issues with something you can’t figure out, just Google it as others have probably had the same questions.
I’ve had mine 2+ years and use it often. There’s plenty of features I haven’t used, but feel free to pm me and I be glad to help if I can.
'07 198 DLX Carolina Skiff
FS90 Suzuki
How about giving a review of it once you try it out.
So far I’ve used it mainly on the lakes around home and I love the charts, and the downscan imaging. I’m still working on figuring out some of the settings but I believe this will do everything that I want and then some. Can’t wait to get to the coast to see how it marks shrimp.
I feel better now at exploring new territory since I can see the depths all around me instead of just under the boat, which is the main reason that I wanted this unit.
Once we get to shrimping, I’ll take a few screen shots to share…
961 War Eagle CC w/90 Yamaha