The boat that I recently bought has this fish finder on it. I’d like to buy a lake master chip for it. Where is the best place to buy one, and will any one work? I’ve never used one before, so are they worth it? I’m looking for one for Minnesota. Do they have them for individual lakes, or do you need to buy the chip for the state? Sorry for all the questions. Thanks!
I have 597 CI HD DI and am very happy with it. Going on six years now. Make sure you do all the updates. Use mine in the winter, too.
IMG_1076.jpg
How do you do the updates? There wasn’t a manual that came with it?
The boat that I recently bought has this fish finder on it. I’d like to buy a lake master chip for it. Where is the best place to buy one, and will any one work? I’ve never used one before, so are they worth it? I’m looking for one for Minnesota. Do they have them for individual lakes, or do you need to buy the chip for the state? Sorry for all the questions. Thanks!
make sure its a humminbird card which any lakemaster card at a retailer will be now days; i beleive they just released a new version a month or so ago with more lakes they’ve surveyed. i know they do have a site where you can purchase individual lakes if you only fish one or 2 lakes, fishsmart app i beleive its called and it transfers to your card
Here’s the latest Minnesota card:
https://www.humminbird.com/Products/HCMN7/
You can buy them at Cabelas, maybe Dick’s, any major bait shop, maybe Amazon, etc. If you find a used one on ebay or c-list, be sure it’s a Humminbird card before you buy it. Cards made for Lowrance won’t work.
You can buy individual lakes here:
https://chartselect.humminbird.com/
That’s all I know about that.
You can download your manual here:
https://www.humminbird.com/Category/Support/Product-Manuals/
ex owner of a 597 myself and liked it.
These will also take older Navionics cards. Putting this out there as it may be a way to save money. If the lakes you need have good surveys on the older cards then it can work. My Navionics card is around 8 years old and worked great.
That said, I was only hitting some of the major lakes like Tonka, Mille lacs, Gull. Sold the 597 but kept the chip for my handheld gps.
If you have not registered your 597, do so. It has to be registered to download updates. To check what version you currently have power up and hit menu and scroll down to system options. Enter and it will show you the software version you have. The last update they made , I think, is 7.21. That update allowed one to turn DI off when using the iceducer
Under setup you can find the list of lakes the 597 has
IMG_1085.jpg
Oops. 7.12 is the last update, not 7.21.
This is a slightly older post but I had the 597 and disliked it for a couple of reasons.
1. Map scrolling is painfully slow on that model, it has an older style slow processor which seemed to take forever if you wanted to look ahead of your boat or check different areas on the mapping application.
2. For river fishing where its mostly shallow, the beam width is very narrow (originally when I bought it they listed a wider beam width, after I bought it I saw they revised the specs downward to show the narrower beam).
Do yourself a favor, sell that and buy one of the new models if your going to use mapping or make it a secondary on the front of the boat. I sold that one and bought an 899 and was much much happier with it.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
