gps?

my f.f. (elite 4)has a gps,thank god...came in handy in the fog,but by the way sucked at seeing fish. how many others use a gps? what brand/model?. at the sportsmen show broke down and picked up a backup for my f.f.ers gps. a garmin oregon550t anyone have any experience with this one? with this one or the other could go down and rely on the other to get back.

I figure my Navionics app will have me covered. The "map" app on my iPhone is also scary accurate.

Fred "True" Trujillo

I have a Garmin Oregon 450T that is great (especially good on coastal rivers/lakes and in wilderness areas with no cell coverage, places where a smarty phone goes like "duh, where are we?"  LOL),

got it about 4 years ago, great touch screen and battery life, I added the hi-res 24K topo maps for areas that we have hiked in, 550T might come with those built in, not sure...

On my kayaks, it provides good MPH and distance covered data plus charting for location and trolling patterns..cheers, roger

The Oregon 550t is a great unit.  Took me some time to figure it out, thank goodness for the factory reset option.  Just be careful around water it does not float.  For my kayak I run the Lowrance HDI 7 with Navionics.

I have a hand held GPS that I will use in the salt water. I get a really long battery life on my fish finder which does not have a GPS. I'm talking a difference of 3-4 full days versus 1.5 days. For that reason I always take my Lowrance X-4 into the salt water instead of my other setup.

One thing which also drove me to use the hand held GPS out on the salt was that if my electronics fails for my fish finder for whatever reason, my GPS is still available. I have an older model GPSMap 62s by Garmin.

In the event I need to navigate by GPS (clouds/fog/whatever) I find that the hand held GPS will do the trick. I did like using my GPS equipped fish finder to learn the correct trolling speeds but after a few times out that's just easy to guess my speed. The fish don't seem to notice.

I have the Oregon 450T (3years going strong, love it).  I loaded marine bluecharts which has ocean bathymetry (depth) and lots of buoys/navaids.  The inland lakes and rivers on the 24K-TOPO maps do not have any depth data, so I use a fish finder there.  I won't go anywhere without my handheld GPS, it's great to retrace the track or go to waypoints from previous tracks.  So here's another vote for redundancy even if you have a good Fish Finder GPS.

I wish I had GPS during the fog fest that was ORC 2 years ago.  Kind of spooky when I couldn't see land or any other fisherman.  Fortunately I spend a lot of time outdoors and have a great sense of direction.

I do have GPS on my Humminbird FF but only use it to mark bottom structure.  I don't rely on my FF to actually locate fish, I use it to spot locations that I know fish like to hang out.

I have both a Lowrance Elite 4 and Garmin Rino 530 HCX hand held. I use the Elite 4 to trackback and mark positions. The Garmin is my backup GPS and Friend locator. It allows me to track and find friends with similar devices. Both units are rock solid in the satelite acquisition and do not depend upon cell tower reception.

Wobbler

I have a Garmin Rino 520 (i think)  The friend locator is great.  We have to use it while snowmobiling to go find somebody that was broke down/ stuck several times.

I have a Garmin Rino 520 (i think)  The friend locator is great.  We have to use it while snowmobiling to go find somebody that was broke down/ stuck several times.

I had to use the locator feature to find my dad in Ladd Canyon.  He had tripped and knocked himself out on the trail. It led me right to him.

Steve

I bought the Garmin Oregon 450t (actually bought it out east just before moving to oregon) and really like it. I have drooled over the rhino units too, that buddy feature seems like it could come in mighty handy