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Posts: 79
| Over the past several months I have been reading posts on this subject and which is better etc..etc.. I spent a lot of time on the subject a couple of years ago and thought maybe this post may help some.
In terms of which is better Lakemaster or Navionics: I have both Navionics and Lakemaster. Lakemaster has more musky lakes charted in Minnesota and I think also in Northern Wisconsin. A person has to buy individual chips for Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Lake of the Woods/Rainy lake. With Navionics one chip will do all three. I personally like the look of Lake master better, but others prefer the Navionics look. (it is a chevy vs ford opinion) Lakemaster is better in my opinion on some lakes and Navionics is better on others where both companies have mapped. When I am trolling I find myself prefering one chip vs another on certain lakes. If a person is running Hummingbird units then the lakemaster chip has the water offset option as well as depth highlighting. In my opinion this could be a big asset in targeting fish. Lakemaster also has better mapping on the lower 2/3s of Lake of the Woods than the Navionics. It is more detailed than the Navionics. Navionics does have a general map on their chip and has all of Lake of the Woods on it. (Even with lakemaster being more detailed, I still hit a rock near shore last year with my skeg that was not on the lakemaster chip and definately not on the Navionics chip.)Lakemaster will no longer be selling or supporting Lowrance units. Because I run Lowrance I went to cabelas and buy another Lake of the woods chip and another minnesota chip for back ups in case one of my chips gets ruined. Again if you want a lakemaster chip that fits a Lowrance unit you will need to buy now before the stores run out.
In terms of which is better Lowrance or Hummingbird here are current benefits to each: I use Lowrance but like the Hummingbirds as well. In my opinion it is more easy to buy the lowrance HDS units and buy cables and plug them into the LSS-1. On my one boat I put an LSS-1 with an expansion port. Plugged into that I have Sirus weather, and cables running through the boat. I am able to use my lowrance HDS 7s on ram mounts and move them around. In the fall I chose to run 3 HDS 7s accross the dash for trolling rather than one HDS 10. The reason is that I can move them around with ease. With hummingbirds the units in the past all included structure scan so with my configuration is was less money to go with the Lowrance unit.
The second reason I went with Lowrance is because of the waypoint system. With Lowrance on one HDS 7 unit I have a fish symbol and a number, on my second unit I have a heart symbol with no number, and on my third unit I have a weed symbol with the number turned off. These symbols/waypoints trasfer throughout my system with out having to change it every time. (this is a system that Brad Nelson taught me and is absolutely amazing for putting fish in the boat) Currently this can't be done with the Hummingbird system, although I have heard they are working on being able to do this in a future upgrade.
I have never had an issue with Lowrance customer service on many calls and their website help page is awesome. Not sure what is up with Lowrance customer service bashing??????
One hummingbird feature that is great over Lowrance is the water offset and the lakemaster highlighting should that feature be used.
I like the looks of the Hummingbirds and the supposed ease of use over the lowrance.
There is also some rumor of potential networking with the Terrova units and the Hummingbird units which would definately be amazing.
As with any unit these are tools. Remember when double tens first came out. There were people everywhere saying they were not better than the standard bucktail. I remember when color units came out and people said the same thing. A good tool used correctly will put more fish in the boat. The following are a couple uses for the tools described above:
The waypoint/icon labeling system is amazing. I had the privelage of fishing with Brad Nelson in my area and I showed him an area that I said was too tough to figure out. It was a flats with a zig zag of weeds on it. The next day I showed up and he had the weeds marked amazingly well with weed icons and marks on the heaviest weeds. We boated several fish in this area up to 50". I was blown away that he was able to so accurately define the structure.
Another tool is the side imaging. Again some don't feel any use. A couple of years ago I was catching some very impressive fish (not Muskies) in an area. Another friend came next to me in a boat and asked my depth. I told him. He explained he was in the same depth. I laughed but didn't tell him that my structure scan and side imaging displayed that the bottom I was fishing was different than the bottom he was fishing. Without side imagining it would be impossible to define this.
I attached a screen shot of my running set up on LOTW and what is likely a musky based on my experience with side imaging 60 feet to the right.
Edited by ande 12/7/2011 9:40 AM
(sabaskong bay running pic.jpg)
Attachments
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 sabaskong bay running pic.jpg (81KB - 217 downloads)
musky right.png (149KB - 185 downloads)
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