Thread: Discussion on Lowrance Elite 5 DSI/Chartplotter ....

What do you think of the HDS units if you were buying today, would you prefer the HDS unit over the e-5 are the e-7

Do you like E five better than the HDS eight, about the only thing that I would want on it would be the GPS and the down imaging if I could get one like that

You're going up in cost with Gen 2 units like HDS 5 or 8. Only difference is screen size basically. An HDS 8 I'd plenty big for an average user.

Thanks a lot, nice talking to you,i like to read your post you seem to know your delph finders it does good to talk to a person like you before you buy something that i don't know anything about. thanks again i enjoy it and learned a lot

Thanks and glad to help but the thread originator (crappiepappy) is this units field expert! Lol

I know just enough about Lowrance units and very little about Hummingbird due to no experience with them.

Best thing you can do is ask questions and play with the units on display at a Bass Pro or Cabelas and then call with manufacture and tell them what you need vs what you want and let them make their recommendation to you for your needs. They would rather have a happy repeat customer then sell you something you didn't need. They would rather have repeat business.

Hey guys, new member and first post here. I joined because of this very informative thread on the Elite 5 DSI chartplotter/imager, which I just purchased two weeks ago. And yes, I read all 61 pages over the course of the last week! However, I’m also an occasional crappie angler down here in Florida, so this forum appeals to me in that regard as well.

While reading through this thread, I’ve picked up a lot of great pointers that I’ve already used on my E5, but one thing that I haven’t been able to figure out is how to load the Lowrance Enhanced Lake Maps on my unit. The free enhanced maps were brought up by OzarkAngler back on page 48, and there is one lake in Florida that I’m particularly interested in. The problem is, once I download the .at5 file I don’t know what to do with it. I tried placing it on a micro-SD card and sticking it in the unit and powering it on, but it didn’t seem to make any difference for the lake in question. There were no new chart source options to switch to and seemingly no way to manually load it from the card like a waypoint, route or trail. Has anyone used these successfully and if so, mind sharing how you did it?

Thanks!

On another note, prior to the Elite 5 I’ve been using the Navionics iPhone app as a basic GPS/plotter. During the year or so that I’ve used iPhone I had saved quite a few routes, tracks and markers within the app, and I wanted to find a way to transfer those to the Lowrance rather have to recreate them by hand. Well, I came up with a process that works really well and I successfully transferred everything from the phone to the E5, so if anyone here would find that useful, just let me know and I’ll write it up and post it.

Uh.....write up please! :-)

Oh and you are supposed to be able to switch from Lowrance to Navionics map but I don't see a big difference on the free one I downloaded. May not be an enhanced map after all.

SCREENSHOT UPDATES
I used some new settings today and experimented more.
Keep in mind, I'm using a traditional sonar next to my Elite 5 to help better interpret sonar images. I can get traditional "fish arches" a lot easier on the adjacent graph. I have a dual transducer setup with one on the right and the other on the left side of my transom. So far I don't get interference between the two transucers pinging different frequencies.

I have NOT had much luck using the dual 455/800kHz setting. I get better images using one or the other.

For crappiepappy - I used a blue background for you! LOL!

Marking group of small bait balls in 54ft using 800kHz setting
(graph settings: 800kHz, noise rejection off, surface clarity set to off and contrast turned up around 70 with blue background - reduce contrast if using white background)


Another shot with same settings showing larger bait balls


For users who have problems seeing structure and fish your Elite 5, try this and look at image below

Settings: white background, 800kHz, contrast around 60-70 (play with contrast till you start seeing a mix of yellow/orange/red and get the best picture and detail), surface clarity set to low and noise rejection is off


Here is the same pic with the small game fish circled in red so you can learn to interpret your graph display.


Here is a portion of a cedar tree my graph picked up as I drifted by with a massive boulder next to it.


Here is a view of one of my trolling runs with crankbaits behind me about 140ft back. Notice I'm targeting the 15-20ft range and I found a school of crappie or possibly white bass with what appears to be a submerged stump on the right.


Here is another trolling run for walleye next to an island. I marked waypoints as I found fish and discovered a continuous line of fish in a particular depth range. I setup a "milkrun" and trolled the area 3 times and got a nice walleye.

Below is a screenshot of the walleye with my path showing with the magenta tracked trail.