Joe wrote: "You may want to check again though maybe only the sal****er
maps. I don't do as much lake fishing. The hot spot maps I have for most of
the FL coast attribute the information to a handful of guides as at least on
source. Not saying that they are not any good but when you put a marker on a
fishing hole somebody is bound to give it a try."

The information you get from local guides or marina owners is very valuable.
You can not get this information by just looking at a map. IN Louisiana
where the land is disappearing at 25 square miles a year, the water bottoms
are consistently changing. There are a lot of hidden structure where
islands use to be. You could drive your boat right over the are and not
even realize it use to be an island. On that note, I have a friend that
uses his GPS and plotter to shrimp with. The model he uses has a built in
map of the are his shrimps. The map is upgradeable and he purchased the
latest map. He switch back to the old one after only one time use. The
reason is the newer map did not have the islands and land mass that is gone.
Knowing where these land mass are is valuable when you are trawling so you
do not run aground.

I fish sal****er only and never plot where I catch fish. I fish that I can
ride right up to the area that I caught before. I do use my GPS to help me
by tracking my route in case I run into a problem with low water I can mark
it. When I get home I circle the area on my aerial photo to indicate
unpassable area on low tide or high tide situations. Plotting where the
fish are would only serve me as to keep records of what areas seem to
produce more catches. I am not interested in that. Fish are constantly on
the move in the sal****er marsh. They will follow the bait. I have limited
out on specks (25) in one spot on one day and the next day that spot produce
zero fish. The bait had moved and so did the fish.

Some of you have had problems with Garmin and some with Magellan. I own
three different brand GPS units. One Garmin, one Magellan and Lowrance and
they all work. They contact customer service for both Garmin and Magellan
and both talked to me. I e mailed on Magellan and they emailed me back
within two business days which I consider reasonable. Both the Magellan and
the Garmin can be hooked up to the computer via a cable. I have used the
Magellan with mapping software, hooked up to my laptop to help me navigate
from Louisiana to Calgary, Canada. The matter of mapping software is a
personal preference as is what brand and type of GPS you want. You need to
check with friends that own one so that you can try it. Some models are a
little more confusing then others.

A good source to get GPS coordinates on line is www.maptech.com You pull up
the area you want then move the cursor over the spot you want. The
coordinates will be on the right side. Just make sure that when entering
the coordinates in any GPS unit that information is in the same format as
you are storing. Make sure that you use the same exact format such as 90 34
05 compared to 90 34 044, This may seem trivial but it could make a
difference of several hundred feet.

Sarge