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GPS
/ Sonar Combos Made Easy by John Noel
Sonar has been around long enough that people are fairly comfortable
with it. Some just use it for depth and fish symbols while others
get a little more advanced. “I look for little curved
shapes on the bottom,” Aaron Barber told me. “I
know it’s a smallie with his belly to the bottom of Lake
Erie. When fishing the Everstarts, I have my co-angler keep
his eye on the Matrix 67 I use at the console. If he sees what
looks like a sausage on the bottom, I tell him to drop his tube
down right away. It almost always results in a hookup.”
GPS, on the other hand, can make people a little uncomfortable:
“Do I need it? How do I use it? It costs a thousand dollars!”
GPS is now a “must have” and it doesn’t have
to cost a bunch.
At the high end of the scale, Sonar/GPS units can cost $1000
to $2500 and even more. These units will likely be in color
with high definition screens. The GPS functions, when used
with a Navionics chip, will include full mapping with contour
lines, depth markers, buoys and other navigation aids. Having
moved to Ontario this past year, I found the mapping features
to be invaluable. Competing in the Canadian Fishing Tour’s
high profile 2-day circuit brought me to a few bodies of water
I had never fished. The Thousand Islands area was a particular
challenge with all the shoals and, of course, islands. My
Matrix 97 let me know which island I was actually floating
next to and happened to show me the Marina where I found the
majority of the largemouth I weighed in.
Affordable sonar / gps combos won’t offer all the mapping
features but can be equally as helpful. An entry level Matrix
12 with 240x240 pixels will cost a little over $220. To access
the gps features requires the AS-GR4 antenna, which is less
than $150. At $370, this little package from Humminbird can’t
be beat, and the gps functions are very easy to understand.
At a bare minimum, having a GPS on board can help insure
your safety. Fog can roll in very quickly or your sense of
direction can get messed up. A GPS will always be able to
point you back to the ramp if you’ve marked it before
you head out. When you first put your boat in the water and
the engine is warming up, turn on your Matrix and do the following:
1- Hit the menu key once.
2- Be sure the “mark” function is highlighted
(will be lighter in color).
3- Hit the “right” cursor arrow.
You’ve just entered the spot that you want to return
to at the end of the day. This is a “waypoint.”
It is automatically assigned a number between 001 and 500.
It is possible to go into the gps
menu and assign this waypoint a name instead of this
number.
What do you do to get back to this point at the end of the
day?
NOTHING!! There is a “grid screen that will always
show you your position, your direction, and the waypoints
you have entered. You will see whether or not you are heading
towards your waypoint or away from it. The “zoom in
/ zoom out” feature may help you see all this on the
screen. It is also possible to have the GPS draw you a line
to follow back to your waypoint. Simply do the following from
the GPS screens:
1- Hit the menu key once.
2- Highlight the “Goto” function and hit the right
cursor arrow.
3- Highlight the waypoint you wish to navigate to and hit
the right cursor arrow.
You will now have a line to follow, drawn on the screen.
You will also find a lot of other information on the screen,
such as “distance to go” (DTG), “bearing”
(BRG), your actual heading in degrees, speed, depth, water
temp and cross track error (XTE), which is your distance off
course. I recommend simply following the line on the screen
until you’re back at the ramp. It really couldn’t
be any easier.
The Matrix 12 is a great sonar as well with 240x240 pixels
and 2000 watts with a 5” screen. If you prefer a higher
definition unit, the Matrix 17 has 320x320 pixels, and the
Matrix 27 has a 640x320 pixel count. Each unit has the same
GPS features when matched with the AS-GR4 antenna.
John Noel
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