Garmin Lowrance

[JonD]

Anyone know if charts for Garmin show NSW marine parks ? From what Ive found online form people who have bought the latest charts, are claiming they don't, which is odd but they do for QLD marine parks.

Ive been with Lowrance for many years, normally using the higher end units of around $4000 but quite frankly the amount of problems I had with the last 12 inch unit I would like to jump ship to the Garmin 8410 on the boat I have. I believe Garmin to be better in deeper water, often my Lowrance would tell me I was in 2m of water when out past the shelf. Once Lowrance lost bottom out deep, that was it until I got back inside the shelf.

The whole charting side seems to be lees than great for Garmin, which doesn't make sense considering they own navionics and cmap so I believe!!!! the latest Cmap reveal is a cracking chart if you happen to fish any of the areas which have been surveyed with the bathymetric sonar.

Here's another crazy thing, I connected my Lowrance point 1 into the nmea 2000 network hub which my has 5 unit recognises in the devices. However the Lowrance doesn't actually operate from it but the old Garmin in the network does, which will save me buying something from Garmin to do the same job.

[GoingFishing]

Ive never used Garmin so cant help, but thought it would be worth mentioning that losing depth reading beyond the shelf sounds like a transducer issue rather than the head unit perhaps

[Smobaby]

Jon the Garmin g2 cards show marine parks very well. Have two seperate units on board gpsmap8008 for navigation and 7412 For sonar networked together. The charts display better on the 7412 with better detail although using same card and updates better processor the 8400 series will be better. Garmin user friendly with plenty of technology. Check out panoptix and UHD both work amazing in shallow water great for inshore.

Also run gt51m chirp and ss164 thru Hull for deep water you won’t look back.

Edited July 22, 2020 by Smobaby

[kingie chaser]

11 hours ago, Smobaby said:

Jon the Garmin g2 cards show marine parks very well.

Are the cards transerable to other units??

 

I know with GPS units they dont allow their mapping cards/software to be able to be used in more than one unit which really sucks as it forces you to buy software for each device.

Edited July 22, 2020 by kingie chaser

[JonD]

3 hours ago, kingie chaser said:

Are the cards transerable to other units??

 

I know with GPS units they dont allow their mapping cards/software to be able to be used in more than one unit which really sucks as it forces you to buy software for each device.

Thats how they make money!!!...I paid $450 for navionics platinum for lowrance which unfortunately won't play in Garmin units even though Garmin own Navionics. 

Edited July 23, 2020 by JonD

[Blackfish]

Thats stuffed Jon.

[kingie chaser]

7 hours ago, JonD said:

Thats how they make money!!!...I paid $450 for navionics platinum for lowrance which unfortunately won't play in Garmin units even though Garmin own Navionics. 

Absolutely.

I'm not sure about anything in your last sentance but I did have it out with Garmin Australia once when I upgraded a handheld & tried to put the same micro SD card into the new unit & it wouldnt have it.

So when I called them directly & asked them why if I own one software suite I cant use it in multiple REGISTERED devices.

I got the responce that each device is a seperate licence so it has to have its own software.

Anyway I blew up & started to basically call them thieves!

They saw I had 3 registered garmin devices so they gave me a new product key to use the existing version of Topo maps I had in the new handheld device but it was not updateable without paying for the new version & the old unit kept the mapping but couldnt be sync'd with my account so I couldnt load any waypoints of info via PC but I could still use it. 

 

They are just greedy pigs imo & if you pay for software you should be able to use it in multiple devices as longs you are the registered owner of them all! 

 

There are lots of software & service applications around now where once you subsribe you can use it on say 3 devices, including microsoft office, Netflix etc

 

Just pure greed imo but just seems like anything to do with mapping is different!!

Edited July 23, 2020 by kingie chaser

[Smobaby]

Unfortunately that’s the way the boating/fishing  market operates. You can always fish from the shore or in a bay. The charts for offshore help with marine park boundaries which will help you be on the right side of the law. 

[back cruncher]

Hi all...I originally bought navionics platinum for my old hummingbird,upgraded to a lowrance and it worked fine.bought a new boat with a Simrad and it works fine as well.

[zmk1962]

On 7/22/2020 at 5:34 PM, JonD said:

Once Lowrance lost bottom out deep, that was it until I got back inside the shelf.

Just catching up on this ... I have found that if my sounder (older Eagle now LEI) is on AutoDepth setting and loses bottom at Browns then it has a lot of difficulty finding bottom again. Switching it to Manual depth and setting a depth greater than the last reading helps it find bottom pretty quick. May be worth a shot until you replace the unit.

Cheers Zoran

[JonD]

2 hours ago, zmk1962 said:

Just catching up on this ... I have found that if my sounder (older Eagle now LEI) is on AutoDepth setting and loses bottom at Browns then it has a lot of difficulty finding bottom again. Switching it to Manual depth and setting a depth greater than the last reading helps it find bottom pretty quick. May be worth a shot until you replace the unit.

Cheers Zoran

I tried, using manual depths which never seemed to help once bottom had been lost on the newer units. Going back to the standard first hds units I never had those problems. Having seen how much better the Garmin higher res screens are at separating and identifying fish I now can't wait to get one fitted in my boat. My daughter keeps coming home from days in the charter boats she works on with screen shots from all kinds of fish at different depths, whch clearly look different from each other. On my Lowrance I could find fish ok in waters to the start of the shelf but all these different species looked much the same, blobs of fish. Some blobs unfortunately end up being costly leather jackets!!!

Even though these screen shots looked promising, having dived each of these it turned out to be sweep and damsel fish.