Thread: Need recommendations for a GPS unit for my pontoon boat

Steve, I was waiting for some of the electronics experts to respond but I'm up in the middle of the night watching a sick dog so decided to tell you what little I know.

You have actually given some tough conditions to meet. You pay for screen size and it goes up as the screen increases. Water temperature is read from a transducer normally. A transducer is for imaging under the boat so you have to get some sort of combo unit even if you don't use the depth finder. You can always turn the depth finder off and just view the gps screen. Another problem is most combos only show basic mapping so, for detail about the lake, you would need to buy a mapping card. If you forget the water temp requirement a stand alone gps or handheld gps will normally cost much more than a gps/depth finder combo. You can get a good combo on the cheap but it will come with a small screen. H'bird, Lowrance, RayMarine and Garmin all make such a unit. If you are going to put it at the helm of your pontoon a small screen showing only the gps page isn't too bad. but you still have the problem of needing a map card (such as the Navionics you can use on your phone.) Unfortunately, the cards are not free and usually run about $100 up.

Looking at what is available now you can get some small color combos for less than the price of a b/w stand alone fish finder from a few years ago. You just need to look at the available units on the Bass Pro or Cabelas web sites and find one that works for you. They will have great descriptions of their size and capabilities. I would recommend you look at a small Garmin model. They have recently began getting back into freshwater units but have long time been a leader in off shore stuff (and the leader in GPS.) I recently switched from Lowrance to Garmin for their simplicity. Mine are larger units and cost more but Garmin has a echoMAP 43dv (for downvu) priced at $299. Their next size up is a 53dv for $499. It's actually got a decent size viewing screen. Garmin has a echoMAP rebate of $100 right now but the 43dv is not included. The 53dv is, so that would reduce the cost to $399 for it. Dyabolical just picked up one of these. Another advantage of the Garmins is that they have LakeVu mapping pre-loaded so you get very good detail without having to buy an additional map card. Eufaula shows 1 foot contours on LakeVu. There are some off shore units that don't have the LakeVu (but they are the "4" series such as 44dv and 54dv - you don't want those.) I'll see if I can find a screen shot with some detail of the gps.

After you check them out online you can go to BPS and compare side by side the lesser expensive units of the manufacturers in demo mode. I would recommend doing so and then ordering online to save the sales tax.

Floyd

Most of my screenshots don't include the gps screen but here is a portion of one. The boat (your location) appears large and the creek small because of the zoom level I had it on, but you can see that Eufaula has the one foot contours. This shot came from Gaines Creek.

Reading back over this there is one important point I missed. I think a depth finder is important even though you don't fish from the pontoon. When we had ours 25 years ago I had a separate boat to fish from. But, I always wanted to see what's down below. I don't know how many times I have seen recreational boaters unknowingly pulling skiers or kids on a tube fast over deep water that had submerged trees within a couple of feet of the surface.

I absolutely agree with everything iKen said. I'd just like to add that as good as Navionics and other map cards are good, they are not 100% accurate! NEVER depend on them for navigation alone. They have too many errors especially in depth contours, sometimes off by large amounts. And they don't always have every obstacle you will find in the water. Case in point, a few years back I went to Eufaula to fish. Had a Navionics card active in my Lowrance HDS 8. I hit a submerged old bridge that stopped me instantly, while ideling along. Had I been up to speed, no telling how much damage it would have caused. I was extremely lucky that day. I will say that this bridge does not have any warning signs of any kind. It is not on any lake map I've found and I've been told it is not the only one on the lake. I've heard horror stories about others hitting it and not so lucky as I was.
Not only that but, I've found the depth contours are simply not very accurate. You might get an idea of where a sand bar might be, for example but, rarely are they accurate enough to risk serious problems.