Looking for a good hand held GPS to mark fishing spots. Anyone have any advice?
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Looking for a good hand held GPS to mark fishing spots. Anyone have any advice?
I have a garmin 60cx I think is the model #, it works good, but you can get a $100 at wally world and it will do the same. It really depends on what all you plan on doing with it.
IMO , you don't need a fancy one, I bought my etrex (yellow) used off ebay. I have 2 of them. Really simple to operate.
x2 etrexThumbs UpQuote:
Originally Posted by NIMROD
How accurate are these newer models? I had one I bought around 1999~2000, it was suppose to be a good one (at that time) and I was unable to find the same spot in a large parking lot with it, let alone a brush pile I had marked.
Will any be accurate enough to take me to the same brush pile time after time?
mine will get close enough you can throw your marker and fish around it and find your brush. sometimes it might be 10 or 15 foot off. the trick is keep at a steady speed until you get to the spot and throw your marker. when you get close and stop it goes crazy
GPS accuracy is affected by several things, including the weather, tree cover, and the capability of your machine. Look for one that is WAAS-enabled. Another nice feature is the ability to transfer waypoints and trip tracks to/from your PC and work with them. Using this capability, you can reload your handheld with selected trip tracks from your best trips to a fishery. If you have the old trip track, you don't need waypoints as much. When you approach a BP, for example, you'll see the "yarn ball" appearance of the tracks from the old trips & can stay inside that area while your finder pinpoints the BP.
Awesome info Croker, just what I was hoping to learn from this thread. Thanks!!!
Triangulation is your friend.
Agreed. Whenever you can get a set of shore marks to go along with your GPS waypoints, that's even better. You use the GPS to get close and the marks to hit the spot exactly. Unfortunately, many places lack the stand-out features needed for triangulation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gomer Snerd
Hater- I forgot to mention buoyancy as another desirable feature. My GPSmap 76 is waterproof & it floats. It's never been over the side, but once I found it floating in the minnow bucket! By comparison, a friend's handheld GPS drowned in a sudden cloudburst. We made it back to the truck & sat out the 20 min. storm, but the 2" of rain in the bottom of my boat killed his non-waterproof GPS.
I have an older Garmin 76 and it does fine for me. I have it in a ram mount on the front deck and use the "yarn ball" a lot and turn off all other FF. Folks say they don't bother the fish, but I take no chances in shallow water. Throwing a marker gives bystanders the knowledge to come look after you're gone, and this eliminates that. Mine was a refurb from BPS in '04 or '05 and hasn't missed a beat. I also bought a hardwire for it and no longer feed the hungry beast a set of batteries every trip. It has gotten me home on a couple of tough days, fog can be a bear.
I like my lowrnace h2oc. There no longer made so you would have to come across a used one. I like mine because I can put a SD card in it to backup all my waypoints & trails and can also use that card to transfer to another unit. I can also put a navionics chip in it as well. Mines gotten a good shower many times and still works fine.
I use a Garmin Summit and it works great for fishing.