Rainy Lake Garmin LakeVu HD

I am looking to make the switch from a smaller Lowrance unit to the 7 or 9 inch Garmin echoMAp. I fish Rainy Lake 3-4 times a summer and really like the Lake Insight map software for navigating Rainy. It is detailed and seems to be quite accurate. When I go on the Garmin site it doesn’t have Rainy listed as an HD lake for either the LakeVu HD software thats built in or the add on LakeVu Ultra Card. Am I missing something or is Rainy not included as an HD lake for Garmin? I really like the Garmin units and want to make the switch, but I am nervous about the mapping on Rainy. Any help will be really appreciated!

I have the ultra card I can take a look in a day or two and fire a graph up and see. But it does have rainy river I was there this spring so I would imagine it would have rainy lake but I can get back to you on it and let you know.

I haven’t been there to try it myself but it is listed on http://lakes.garmin.com. I attached an image of my search.

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   Search_Garmin_LakeVü_Lakes.png
   

Sean Wachsmuth wrote:

I am looking to make the switch from a smaller Lowrance unit to the 7 or 9 inch Garmin echoMAp. I fish Rainy Lake 3-4 times a summer and really like the Lake Insight map software for navigating Rainy. It is detailed and seems to be quite accurate. When I go on the Garmin site it doesn’t have Rainy listed as an HD lake for either the LakeVu HD software thats built in or the add on LakeVu Ultra Card. Am I missing something or is Rainy not included as an HD lake for Garmin? I really like the Garmin units and want to make the switch, but I am nervous about the mapping on Rainy. Any help will be really appreciated!

@seanw

I had my Garmin + HD Ultra map chip handy so I took a look. Rainy doesn’t look to be a 1′ contour lake or my map chip needs an update. I fished Lake of the Woods over the weekend and LOTW is a 1′ contour lake and the map is very, very good. I would imagine Rainy would be at the top of the list for lakes to be surveyed by the Garmin survey crews that have been working all over the Midwest this summer. I sent an email to some of the people I know at Garmin to see if Rainy is being mapped now or if it will be in the near future. I’ll report back if I hear anything.

I’ve attached a screen capture of Rainy in the American Narrows area for reference.

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Thank you all for your replies! I appreciate all of you taking the time to look things up for me, check your maps, and sending emails! I went to Scheels and looked at the unit they have there and I don’t think it was a 1ft contour on Rainy. That may very well have been because it wasn’t updated with the latest map. After digging some more last night and following the links posted above I do see that Rainy is an HD map (Maybe it’s a recent addition).

So, onto the next question. Not sure if I should start a new thread with this or not, but Ill start here. Those of you using Garmin units, do you like them? I am thinking about either the echoMap 93sv or the 73sv. Any recommendations? Should I get the map chip as well? Thanks for your help!!

I looked on my 73SV purchased this spring and it looks like what James posted, it’s not 1′ contours. Looking at lakes.garmin.com I see the difference and it’s kind of confusing I think. You’ll see that Rainy is included in LakeVü™ HD but what it says it has is “Bathymetry (>1′ Contours)” whereas other lakes say “HD (1′ Contours)”. So just because it’s part of LakeVu HD doesn’t mean it is HD.

That all being said I do like it and am mostly happy with my choice to get a 73SV and 43DV. I bought the 73SV because I thought that’s all that would fit comfortably under the windshield of my Competitor 165. I wish now that I would have bought the 93SV though just so I don’t spend so much time with my face 6 inches away from the screen and will probably upgrade next year. The lakes that do have the “HD (1′ Contours)” seem to be very accurate from what I have seen. Since you can’t just buy a map chip for lakes you want though, and who knows how long until they’ll add Rainy or other lakes, I suppose you’ll really have to study lakes.garmin.com to see if it will have the maps for where you’ll fish. The quickdraw contours is pretty neat and works well but, so far for the most part, I haven’t noticed enough of a difference between it and the built in maps to spend much time mapping an area out. In one spot on Namakan it did redraw a point pretty significantly from what was built-in and made it match up with the depth readings I was seeing so that was pretty cool if you really needed to stay on the top or edge of it.

Reef W wrote:

I looked on my 73SV purchased this spring and it looks like what James posted, it’s not 1′ contours. Looking at lakes.garmin.com I see the difference and it’s kind of confusing I think. You’ll see that Rainy is included in LakeVü™ HD but what it says it has is “Bathymetry (>1′ Contours)” whereas other lakes say “HD (1′ Contours)”. So just because it’s part of LakeVu HD doesn’t mean it is HD.

I heard back from Garmin on this and Rainy is now a 1′ contour lake. They added the lake in February and their website doesn’t yet reflect that info. So, any new chip will have Rainy on it in 1′ contours and, if the Rainy map is anything like the LOTW map I’ve been using, the accuracy will be very, very good.

I believe Garmin still offers the one time upgrade for any chip purchased in the last 12 months so if you have a chip that doesn’t have Rainy in 1′ contours and you purchased the chip in the last 12 months… you should be able to upgrade.

https://my.garmin.com/maps/chooseDeviceType.htm?#

Thanks for the information! I will be ordering the echoMap 93sv this week. Next trip to Rainy will be on August 10th and I am VERY excited to use it up there!

Even if you buy a new unit and it does not have the current map, Garmin will send you an updated map chip upon request (one time only). I bought a 73SV this spring that had a 2015 map. Contacted Garmin and had a chip with a map dated Jan 16 sent to me.

I was in a similar situation. The Garmin website showed a lake that I fish as having HD 1’contours. The map that came with the unit did not have HD on that lake. After receiving the update from Garmin, I now have HD maps on that lake.

I ended up going with the 93SV echoMap and could not be happier. I love the sonar and the down imaging was pretty cool. Going to take a bit to learn the DI but I am excited to keep playing with it. The unit itself is very easy to use and it seems that the sonar quality is far superior to the Lowrance units I replaced. As far as the GPS goes I thought the map was outstanding on Rainy. It refreshed very fast and seemed to be very accurate. Thanks again for all the advice!!