Boat lanes

Is there any advantage to downloading a boat lane chart over a chip. Can you load the download on your hummingbird or do you download it to the hummingbird unit itself? Looking at the Fork,Toledo,and Rayburn boat lanes.

fork and toledo already have boat lanes that are used daily? why download them, rayburn isn't that hard to run aswell unless your fishing way north.....

Because the chips show shortcuts and routes that are not marked by buoys you can run. For instance if you fish Fork just using the guide cuts on the chip will save you enough time and money to pay for the chip many times over.

theres other ways around it, if you wanna save money you can make your own using other maps topo an historical images, but that would take work. my 2cents is saving money.

Why not? You can buy all 3 for $50. Thats a tank of gas or less.

was not aware it was that cheap for all 3!

+1

found it, thanks for the post, guess listening to dock talk numbers always heard 150+ for those lakes, but 50$ well worth the money

It's worth the money.

I wasn't that impressed with them... but I guess if you aren't that familiar with the lakes it would probably help.

Okay it's worth the buy and yes it's 49.95. But my question was to download or buy the chip. Is there an advantage of one or the other? Also can you download strait to your hummingbird unit?

To answer the original question,I downloaded it to my computer, copied it to an SD card, and imported it into my unit. It is just waypoints and trails.

I think it's good to have because as I get older I tend to forget stuff. I could kick myself for not using GPS when it first came out to mark routes. I can't find a lot of the old ones i used to know thanks to the trees disappearing.

Yes it would be cheaper on guys like me that live far enough away from all 3 lakes ( 106 miles to fork, 70 miles to Toledo,and 50 to Rayburn ) it would pay for itself in gas alone, boat and truck.

Get the download.

If I get the download.... Might be a dumb question... But I only have 1 card slot. Does the lanes only appear when the SD is in the unit or does it remove when the SD is removed? For instance, if I got a navionics or lake master chip will I still be able to see the boat lanes or do I have to keep swapping cards.

Once you Download the data from the chip, it will save in your unit. You can put your navionics or whatever back in and it will overlay the boatlanes chip onto your map

Thanks guys. This is why I like this forum!

Agreed. Wanting to go to Fork for the first time and had some of the same questions

I already had Fork, and a couple weeks ago, I got Rayburn and Toledo. I have never been to Rayburn and I was going for the THSBA Regional tournament. IMO it was worth every penny.

One other thing to consider as well about Fork and probably Toledo, the bouys will move. I've noticed it a lot on fork. A few years ago I was noticing that most of the bouys were dead on, then there would be a couple that have obviously drifted off course. Now there are even more that are off course, and either have been ran over and chewed up. I'm not sure about Toledo, but I could imagine the same to be true.

I downloaded them, put them on a second card, walked out to the boat, loaded them and I'm done.

For the Humminbird units the lanes are setup as tracks with some individual waypoints included, usually to show caution areas. Be careful in those areas especially when the water levels drop.

So, once you load the boat lanes, then you have to go back and re-load the navionics?

Any one have a link to down load these map lanes?

Navionics maps are read directly from the map card, they are not loaded to the unit's memory like the boat lanes GPS data.
You won't have any Navionics maps displayed without the map card in the card reader.
Mapping is not GPS and GPS is not mapping.

If your unit has dual card readers, you don't have to remove the Navionics card at all to load boat lanes to the unit's memory.

I don't have to leave the Navionics chip in mine to see the maps. I have a Lowrance and once I load the map and updates, it is on there.

http://www.boatlanes.com/


http://www.boatlanes.com/boatlanes_purchase.html#boatlanesdownloads


never owned a lowrance but on my birds the lanes are red lines, you can set them up how you want and choose the color/boldness of the line. worth twice the money imo.