Northwest Fishing Reports

If this topic is an old one I'm sorry cuz I'm old too.While crabbing the other day in fairly rough water I had trouble spotting my crab buoy.Mine is 4' tall with yellow caution tape on it so its usually quite visable.Anyways...Do I need just any Magellan or Nuvi type GPS or is there one for marine only?I have a friend who marks where he drops his pots which seemed very smart.I looked for quite a while before I saw that I was really 100 yards away from it in the end.Any input will be appreciated?

I use a Garmen eTrex for my hand held unit, and although it is about 8 or 9 years old, it will give me accuracy to within a few feet in most cases. This option would be great for your use. Granted, I mark rock piles I don't want to hit, and hot fishing spots, not crab pots, but it should work just fine.

Some of the new fish finders have a built in GPS. Mine has built in maps, maps that are not very accurate, but close enough. Still, the unit will get me to within a few feet of my marked spot (~20' with WAAS enabled).

Generally speaking, what you don't want is a car navigation unit like a Tom Tom. Most normal GPS overland units will work just fine for your use.

How much do you want to spend?

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If you are a serious boater on the Sound or Lake Washington, I would invest in good one that you can load charts into. I think that there are marine charts for both Lake Washington and Pudget Sound.

I have thought that living over there and using those big bodies of water, I would have a great fear of a fog back moving in just about sunset. For me, that would be very scary. A GPS would sure calm the nerves a bit. I remember living in San Francisco when the fog would come into the bay in the evening. It was so thick you couldn't see 20 yards in front of you.

Garmin Etrex Vista HCX $250ish
I use it for everything including marking pots drop locations. (Still doesn't help when the pots are stolen like last wekend) But I use it hiking, boating, street nav, and geocaching.

It takes SD cards and can be loaded with a variety of maps on each card. I cought the cd versions of the maps software instead of the SD cards so that I could load just what I wanted.

\I have both metro and topo maps loaded. The base map is goo enough for crab pot setting.

Overall in this setup i have about $425 into it. The Vista is the top model in the small handhelds. The Garmin 76gpsmap HCX or even the CX is a less expensive option of the garmin Venture or a mapping model with less options.

the metro software was about $150
the topo was $55 onsale
Blue charts run around $125-185 if you shop around.

Amazon.com is good place to start.
walmart.com is good for gps units at fair prices, despite the fact I don't usually like to spend my money with the Waltons.