Lowrance Elite-5

Hey all. I have an beautiful new Elite-5 in my boat.
What are my options as to M-SD cards and maps/charts?

I stay in one area mainly and really do not see the need for a Navionics HotMaps card for the whole Northeast.

One issue I have with the pre-loaded maps is that my river area does not show contour lines, which all the documentation I read said it did. Now I find that not all areas will have contour lines, just random depth numbers. This is not at all good enough for me. In fact this is one of the main reasons I replaced my perfectly good fish finder with a combo unit. My handheld GPS andiPhone were not cutting it.

I have the Navionics app in my iPhone and it is excellent. It’s just not very user friendly while driving a boat.
Do I have to drop the $120 for the Navionics card to get the same thing for my Elite-5? or is there a place to download charts for specific areas?

Welcome to IDO!

Where do you do most of your fishing? That will help us help you select a map option.

There are no downloads for your unit, only map cards. They are a great deal if the lakes and rivers you fish are included on the card. But as you indicated, if you fish waters that are not charted with much detail, there’s really no need to drop the coin. Tell us what bodies of water you fish and we’ll tell you if it’s worth getting a card and if so which one.

I fish basically the Hudson River from south of Albany to north of Poughkeepsie.

We will certainly do some road trips, but I am not as concerned about that. I know many of the good spots on the river, but I’d just like to get to know the contour better and expand my range a bit. This boat is new to me and has a much longer range and reliability factor than my old boat.

I am seeing that a pre-loaded card is probably going to be my only option. I guess I can justify it by thinking that no matter where I go in the Northeast I’ll be covered.

Quote:

---

I fish basically the Hudson River from south of Albany to north of Poughkeepsie.

We will certainly do some road trips, but I am not as concerned about that. I know many of the good spots on the river, but I’d just like to get to know the contour better and expand my range a bit. This boat is new to me and has a much longer range and reliability factor than my old boat.

I am seeing that a pre-loaded card is probably going to be my only option. I guess I can justify it by thinking that no matter where I go in the Northeast I’ll be covered.

---

Navionics Hotmaps Premium East (Prem-E6 ) in SD format is your best bet for the Elite 5 in your area. The Hudson River-North & South (Kingston-Coxsackie) in Green and Orange county is listed as having at least some detail but is not as detailed as the Allegheny Reservoir or Champlain for example. Because river levels change and the fact that the encompass so much water they are less likely to be charted in high detail.