Lake Map Apps Worth It?

I used to have the paid version of Navionics for my phone and found it to be decent, but that was around four years ago. Has anyone been using it lately and compared it to a map chip or found it to be good/bad compared to real life?

Also, are there any other phone maps that you would recommend using instead?

I have and use the Navionics phone app, for the price it’s very good imo. Not quite as good as a new chip in a GPS unit, but close enough for the cost difference imo.

Agreed. I use mine quite a bit, especially ice fishing. It’s also nice to have a lake map handy when you’re in talking fishing with a buddy or just feel like killing time by dreaming about spots!

I have the app on my phone also, and it is well worth having.
A little over a year ago I open water fished a lake I had never been on before. The map on my locator had the standard DNR map, which was not much help. The phone app had way more detail than the locator, and saved the day for me.

I’m always using Navionics on my phone. It’s a huge help. Even on lakes that don’t have the depth charts I will use it to save waypoints to go back to later.

I love it. Their maps definitely aren’t perfect but get you close to the area you were going to and allows you to know and find structure that before you would be guessing if you were on it. Totally worth it. I usually end up sitting on it on a slow night at work looking for secret lakes or spots I haven’t fished before.

I have it on a Samsung tablet w/ GPS. Love sitting on the couch the night before a trip and marking potential spots. Has been plenty accurate for my needs.

I had to use it on my summer trip to Lac Suel. There were some pucker moments, but am sure that would have been the case even with on the sounder gps as well. Some of the spots were really accurate, others were poor at best. But as long as you used common sense in the basin areas and took it easy in areas that had variations of depth so your sounder could keep you safe you were pretty good. The scary part or parts of the whole trip were the long runs through the islands, but it seemed that the red route lines seemed to be fairly accurate as well.

Mark

I’ve been messing with the Humminbird FishSmart app. I purchased a lake near my home a fish frequently to test it out. I’ve used it seven times so far while fishing; it crashed hard once requiring my phone to go through a double reboot and has needed phone reboots to track my location three additional times. It seems to me that it tracks location poorly unless you’re leaving a trail. Also, buying individual lakes @9.99+ each is a tad spendy and their terms of use read to be for a limited time. The Lakemaster map quality and features for the available lakes is nice if you’re willing to pay.

Navionics is an infinitely better deal. The maps are pretty identical for many locations.

I was reading recently that the next generation of smartphones will have far better GPS capabilities compared to what is available now.

I haven’t had any issues with FishSmart yet but I have a crappy iphone (dearly miss my androids) from work. Around my area navionics is mostly pointless, their “coverage” of the mississippi river vs lakemaster is a joke. Local lakes are the same.