Lowrance and Insight Genesis - create your own maps!

Fishing is always pretty quite in July and August for me with soccer finals for the kids and myself but I still try to sneak out for an hour or two when I get a chance. I've been managing to brave the cold a few mornings and I decided to utilise one of the excellent features of my Lowrance Elite 5 CHIRP sounder: Insight Genesis. The sounder allows me to record my sonar log to a micro SD card which I can later upload to Lowrance and create a personal map for use on my sounder on future trips. Once you know what to do it's pretty straight forward and if you follow the steps below, you'll have it mastered in no-time.

Plus there is also a competition being run by Lowrance for the next few months called the Insight Genesis Challenge and whoever uploads the most acreage of sonar logs each month wins a Lowrance HDS7 Gen2 Touch. That's an awesome prize in anyone's books, so jump on-board and have a go. Regarding the competition, here is a video of Lee Rayner explaining how to get involved and this link from the Insight Genesis website also has a video that quickly explains it. For the complete FAQ, go here.

So for those that don't want to watch the videos or read all the other stuff, here's my cheat sheet for how to record your sonar:

1. Get a micro SD card. I have an 8GB card and based on my first lot of recordings, that will hold over 80 hours of sonar logs (approx. file size for me was 90Mb per hour).
2. Insert the SD card in your sounder and select the sonar only screen from your 'Pages'. On the Elite 5, if you don't have the sonar page on your screen, you wont get the 'Log Sonar' option when you open up the menu. I know this as on my first attempt on the water I was going backwards and forwards through menus trying to find it without success until I selected the sonar only screen!
3. Hit the menu button, and select 'Log Sonar' then 'Start Logging'. A red dot will flash in the upper right corner of your sounder to show it is recording. Start fishing!
4. Every hour I stop logging and start a new log. That way, file sizes are kept smaller for uploading and if a file is corrupted, you only lose one hour and not the whole session.

And that's it! Simple, huh? The next part is to upload your files to the Lowrance cloud, it then does all the processing and eventually you'll have a map that you can download to your SD card and use on future trips. Another great thing about this tool is that you can merge trips and build up an accurate detailed map over time. The sonar recording is great to review later and below you can see a heap of fish right on the edges of the drop off below.

I started using this in Yowie Bay and below shows the maps and merged trips over a two week period. To get a really accurate map, you go back and forth over the area.

This will allow all the lumps and bumps to be recorded.

The next week I ventured down the other side of the bay and merged my two trips into one map.

If you like, you can also turn off the trail to show the contour map only.

 Here is a zoomed in section showing the detail that can be obtained. Brilliant stuff I reckon.

My next trip was into the upper section and then back down across some previously un-mapped water which I once again merged with my previous map. And each time I go out and merge trips, I'll end up with a more accurate map than the last time.

Oh, and although the fishing wasn't exactly brilliant, I did land a first from my kayak, and it was literally, a beauty.

So once you've finished mapping a section and completed your maps, you can download them and use them on your sounder. In fact, there are literally thousands of maps from around the world that you can download and use on your sounder. It's an awesome feature that can save so much time and effort if you are fishing in a new area. I know that every time I go out in the kayak now, I'll be logging my sonar for future reference. It's a no brainer. Happy yakkin', everyone!

cheers,

Cid

ps I filmed a quick 'How to...' for your sonar logging.