Northwest Fishing Reports

Ok, I procrastinated for a year, finally stepped up and became a premium member.
so now I have down loaded GPS Hotspots to my pc, there's the gpx file and I cant do any thing further with it.
I have a Lowrance Eliete 5,combo unit. Is this not compatible to use these files or am I missing a go between link?
I also have 2013 Navionics Lake Maps, HotMaps/Premium.
I,am begenning to think I might have rushed out and purchased all the wrong stuff?
Please any advice or step by step instructions would be greatly appreciated.

Fret not, you can always manually install the hotspots until you are familiar enough with your unit and understand how to upload data into it.

With a Lowrance unit, simply create a new waypoint and then edit the longitude and latitude to match the hotspot's coordinates. Have a look at page 33 of your user manual, you can download it from the Lowrance website if necessary. If you click on a hotspot that is provided on a walakes report, it will give you the coordinates and any comments from the person supplying the report. On that same page, 33, of your user manual, I see that you have an option to load from card. This is the feature in which you will use to import saved hotspots from this site. I suspect that it will be very similar to my HDS7 unit and once you have transferred the hotspots to a properly formatted SD card, you should have no problems getting the data into your unit.

Keep in mind that your unit has two data sources. The removable memory card and its internal memory. If you are going to load a SD card with waypoints and upload them, they should end up stored in the internal memory. You are not going to be able to store/load them on you Hotmaps card, they like to lock those down to discourage piracy. Get yourself an inexpensive SD card, put it into your sonar unit and format the card. Now you have a card in which you can transfer files between PC and GPS unit. You will also need it if you ever want to update the sonar's software.

Thank you so very much,I think I under stand,Should I limit the sd card to 2gig and will the unit prompt me to format?
also thank you Toni, my PC has several card slots.

kokapaw wrote:Thank you so very much,I think I under stand,Should I limit the sd card to 2gig and will the unit prompt me to format?
also thank you Toni, my PC has several card slots.

Mine doesn't that is why I thought maybe you might be in the same boat.

Good question. Looks like you need a micro SD card for this unit and I didn't see in the manual where it mentioned a size limit. Probably best to call/email a Lowrance rep on that.

Toni wrote:You might need to get a sd card reader for your computer if it doesn't have one.

Lest you forget, a Lowrance card reader. And they are a pain in the.... to get to load on any newer OS's. Waypoint is by far the easiest. Just move the curser to the coordinates and have at it.

G-Man wrote:Good question. Looks like you need a micro SD card for this unit and I didn't see in the manual where it mentioned a size limit. Probably best to call/email a Lowrance rep on that.

I have an older unit and it will take a 32gb card, I confess I have too many maps. If the sonar wasn't so darn good I'd have a Garmin.

I knew I had a 8 gig. Micro SD Card around the house some place, took me a couplel days to get arround to finding it.
Wiped it clean , reformatted it , loaded two gpx. files and gave it a try. No go first thing my Lowrance Elite 5 comes
back with is, card must be 2 gig or smaller. Went shopping, seems so far everyone has 4 gig as the smallest, off the shelf.
I find them online, just hate to order online, for just 4 to 5 dollars!!