![]() This leaves the table-top-sized humps and the small, steep ledges that fish so often cling to reserved for those taking advantage of the mapping features on their sonar. Since most anglers are working with the standard charts seen on the left side of the screenshot, the majority of the boats hitting the water will be focused around only the most obvious pieces of structure. This ability to reveal structure makes all the difference when fishing unknown lakes, but can also be especially beneficial on lakes that receive a lot of pressure. Just a little bit of mapping with Quickdraw, however, and humps began appearing, straight contours tuned into saddles, and areas that once looked like steady declines revealed themselves to be steep ledges. As you can see in the screenshot above, while on Borden Lake near Chapleau, much of the structure that was needed to find fish on this trip was simply not visible on the standard charts. Here are a few of the reasons we run Quickdraw on charted lakes: Finding Hidden Structureįinding structure is essential to finding fish, especially on lakes you are not familiar with. Now that we know how to map, it is time to talk about why you should consider doing it for lakes that are already charted. Then keep hitting Back until you return to your new psychedelic chart.” Why You Should be Mapping Charted Lakes “On the chart page, do the following (make sure you have an SD card inserted to store your recordings):įor Quickdraw – MENU > Quickdraw Contours > Start Recording (Display On)įor Colour Shading – MENU > Chart Setup > Chart Appearance > Depth Shading > New Depth Range > Shading On > Colour (Choose whatever you like) > Lower Depth (preferred lowest depth number) > Upper Depth (preferred highest depth number). Here is an excerpt from Pete’s original article on how they did it: On this particular trip, these were humps and saddles at the depths of around 16 to 18 feet. Finally, the boys put the finishing touches on their new map by colour-shading the areas that they wanted to concentrate on. ![]() ![]() After turning on the Quickdraw feature of their Garmin EchoMAP DV, however, the map now showed every hump, ledge, and finger in the area with detailed 1-foot contours. The screenshot below paints a perfect picture of what a once-barren area can look like after a little bit of charting The same area as shown before and after charting it with Garmin QuickdrawĪs you can see in the screenshots, the map of the uncharted Buck Lake started as… well, just that – a blank, uncharted map. As Pete laid out in his article a few years ago, Quickdraw can completely transform the details your fishfinder can give you and can turn an intimidating body of water into something much more inviting. It's a very clever and useful piece of software, and its included free in the current marine network software bundle and works on the newer chart plotters.Before we get to the why, we must first start with the how. In my case I've been moving my SD card from boat to boat and my mapped area has been quickly growing. The other thing that is cool about the Quickdraw software is you can share the files with others. You can also add custom labels to points of interest to the new chart data. ![]() Quickdraw has offsets for tide height so if I'm recording data at a zero tide then I have to add 1.6 feet to keep the depth data at the same relative level. All of the data I've collected to date is set for a +1.6 foot tide and you have to be aware of your transducer offset. ![]() What you have to be careful of is the status of the tides. You have the option of displaying the new data, or hiding it. You have to stuff a SD card in the chart plotter to record the data. There is some nuance to the Quickdraw software. Take a screen grab, publish the map along with the new route waypoint location data and you're done. You can show the existing nun locations, and drop new waypoints to show the optimum route through the pass. With Quickdraw you can instantly tell if you have blank areas in real time. One of the difficulties with using track point depths is it's hard to tell if you have blank spots in the tangle of tracks while you make it. ![]()
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