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

Cool shots!

Did you catch any of those in shot 3 or 4? Looks like a nice school.

No I don't think so. The little lake is so full of small shad schools right now I think it was making for slow fishing. The only crappie I caught where small ones trolling cranks. I did make up for it today at a larger lake in the big boat with a nice haul of slabs

Anyone know what the (0.2) number is next to my depth reading (24.0ft)?? Also, I get this number on the bottom where the sonar frequency is (800khz in this screenshot).

I've checked my overlay data and currently, I only have depth range, speed over ground, water temp, and trip distance. I just turned trip off and moved water temp below overall depth. So in this shot I have 4 overlay data and I just turned off 1 just now but I cannot determine what these other numbers are and how to turn them off.

I played with the simulator and the number on the bottom changes as the depth changes. I made sure depth is on "auto" and it still shows up.

Any ideas?

Is it keel offset?

Nice call! That's the (0.2) but how do you turn it off and the other number beneath the sonar frequency?

Without looking it up it will be under sonar settings. Set keel to zero.

Well, I’ve had my E5 DSI for a couple months now and although I hardly ever use the imager, I do use the chartplotter quite frequently. Consequently, one thing that has bothered me immensely is the difficulty of planning trips and routes ahead of time, using just the unit’s interface. Down here in Florida where I fish, we have vast expanses of both saltwater and freshwater marshes that are interwoven with a seemingly unending network of shallow, winding creeks and channels, many of which have hidden sandbars or oyster shelves that can tear the heck out of hulls or lower units. As such, I really needed a way to look at high resolution aerial imagery and carefully lay out my routes to avoid said obstacles, rather than discovering and plotting them the hard way.

Happily, I found a simple and free solution…

Some of you may recall that back on page 62 I outlined a procedure for transferring waypoints, routes and trails from the Navionics iPhone App to the E5 (http://www.crappie.com/crappie/fishi...ml#post2380450). Based on what I learned there I was able to build on that and come up with this system for plotting routes using Bing Maps and importing them to the Elite 5.

First you have to go to http://maps.bing.com and locate the area in which you want to plan a route. To view aerial imagery I click the “Bird’s Eye” icon and choose “Aerial”.


Next click on the “My Places” icon along the top of the map.


The My Places Editor will open. Click on the “Trail or Path” tool along the bottom of the editor window. It’s the one highlighted in blue, below…


Now you can start plotting your route. If necessary, use your keyboard arrow keys to move the map around without interrupting your plot.


Once you’re finished plotting, click the “Pan, Zoom, Select” tool back in the editor window (highlighted), and you’ll be prompted to name and save your route.


After saving, select “Actions” at the top of the editor window, choose “Export” and then “KML”. This will save the route as a KML file, at which point you can refer to my previous instructions for converting KML files to Lowrance USR format using GPSBabel.


Again looking back at the earlier instructions, just import the resulting .usr file into your E5 and voila! Your route will appear as a trail, which is easily saved to a route if you wish. I personally prefer using them as trails myself.


Hope you find this as useful as I do, especially since Navionics took away the PC App and left us with no useable tools for pre-planning our trips.