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Random Quote: My wife told me to quit drinking, smoking and fishing, I think thats called Identity theft.
I have been considering the 162 for too long now. I just recently gained some extra money, to buy it if I can sleep at night knowing I made a good choice. (Sorry guys dont have 10,000 for a setup or even 2500, I'm a college student what can I say) It's currently $359.00, not bad on price but should I just save up more money and get something else that will perform better. I own a 17 ft. Cape Horn, and mainly fish in my local bay system, Mobile,, Bay Alabama. I also go approximatley up to 20 miles off shore seldomly. So I need the 162 for marking trout holes i stumble across, and inshore and off shore artificial reefs, and oil rigs holding good fish.So i can find my way back. Will this map do what I need?? I will probably get the Blue Charts CD, will that help much inshore?? Screen size isnt that important since that seems posetively correlated, and since my boat is relatvely small.
Thanks in advance!!
Andre' Reid
yep, the 162 is a fine little unit. I still have mine as a backup, and if I dont find a chartplotter before april or so to replace my raymarine crap, it's going back on the boat until I do.
As to the coverage for your area, I dont know. But you may get lucky by calling around and seeing if someone has the bluecharts loaded in a unit that you can check.
Pretty much the only downside to it is the rate at which it redraws the screen. Sometimes you can cross a map border that forces it to redraw the whole screen and it's painful to watch it.
go to garmin's website and chack coverage areas for the mapsource cd's...us topo is better for inshore maps, and bluechart is better for offshore (i have both). the 162 has more than enough memory to hold the maps that you need
for the price and for what you get it's a super plotter
i have the garmin 162 and bluechart cd.
use it offshore and around mobile bay. good unit and have had no problems with it. the charts i have downloaded on it are good. for mobile bay and ms. sound one stops and the other one starts at about coffee island, near bayou la batre. i run this area alot and have no problems with it being slow when it goes from one chart to the other.
Thanks everyone, especially Seachaser. You really operationalized things for me with place I know. About the 2.5 mb. is that enough fo what we do in the bay and near shore?? Especially if I must load topo and bluecharts. I wanted blue charts to have a corrosonding depth's and markers to go with what I should see in the water and on my depth finder. Also I would like to mark spots where I catch fish, so that when I leave out on one of our semi foggy mornings I can get there in less than an hour. And with all of the artifcial reefs in the bay and near shore it would be nice. Thanks for all of your comments, I will be going to stare at it again maybe tomorrow if i do not get rained in!!
Scuba Steve,
Thanks for your reply!!. Are you familiar with Blue Charts working in the inshore bays?? I'm not sure if you are familiar with Mobile Bay, but it is an Estuarias Delta with rivers that flow into a Approx. 15-20 mile bay by 12 miles wide, then it opens into the Gulf.. So you can see how my fishiing can vary drastically from catching Freshwater Bass, and Redfish in the freshwater rivers to going 15 miles out to a rid in the open gulf for snapper and king. I'm hoping my description can help you recomend the best software.
I have a 162 with bluecharts, it came with my boat. I guess it's ok if you can keep it right in front of you - the screen is really too small to see much detail if it's too far away. 2.5 MB is ok with this unit, I can load enough maps that I don't run off the edge on a normal day. Color would be much nicer, but if you are on a budget it's a good unit. Btw, you see these on ebay quite often.
However, my real rub with Garmin Bluecharts is where they break their areas up. The line of demarkation - the line where you have to buy yet another unlock key - is right between new london and the conn river. What moron would put that line there unless they wanted to maximize their revenues and really tick off customers?
Anyway, here is an example of bluecharts at .5nm resolution, but it goes much closer (at least for this map - it depends on the scale of the map):
i would get the bluechart.
i used to have a bay boat and fished the delta. i have run way up tensaw river using it. it shows the boat right in the middle of the rivers. you can zoom out and see exactly where you are. zoom in and you can see the river beds. the area around tensaw point can be tricky with all the shallow water. no problem with the bluechart, you can see the deeper areas. i have run in to billy goat hole in the fog with no problem. i have over two hundred way points in mine, most are fishing spots but some for safe navigation. its also handy having the cd on your computer to learn on and plan your trips.
the only place i have found so far that it don't show me in the middle of the bayou is coden bayou. it shows the boat being on the side of the bayou. kinda like you was driving down the road beside the bayou, but it is close enough to find the mouth of the bayou in the fog. i use to launch in coden at night and run to the west end to go floundering. was fishing a bluewave at the time.
Thanks again SeaChaser. You help has been awesome. I will probably order the unit from www.byownergroup.com their prices look the best.. Thanks again everyone!1
Brokenlegdave
I think has better prices. Ive been looking at the combo GPS/Fishfinder and plan to buy from them soon. Looking at old posts, people complained about redraw speeds but I heard there was a recent (within the year or so) update to the firmware to speed this up. Do a search on Garmin or GPS on this forum for more posts. Some suggested the Stardard/Horizon 150 but It seems you have to spend more $$ on the PC software and maps compared to Garmin.
Yes, you can use the AC/PC cable on the 160 FF, but you need an adapter cable from Garmin. I purchased one and I think it was $20. Garmin tech support will advise you as to which cable to order, then you can keep your 162 and your 160 up on the latest firmware. I have the 162 and the 240 Blue. Love 'em.
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Melnic thanks for that adress, indeed they are a few dollars cheaper, and every dollar counts. A penny saved is a penny earned.
Hotspots, I appreciate that info about getting the adapter to get updates for my FF. That will help tremendously. I was not looking foward to paying $70 for that cable. That essentially takes $70 bucks off of the cost of the GPS unit, and sinc the adapter is $20 I save $50 so to speak!!
Thanks guys, I guess I'll just have to decide who is the cheapest!! I may take a look on e-bay also. Thanks agian guys you just do not know how long I have comptemplated this purchase. I cannot afford to waste money, not only do I take 15 hours at Univ. of South Alabama, but I pay for it. So the little time I get to fish is precious to me, and I cannot afford either expensive equipment nor cheap equipment that does not work. It seems from all of your comments that the Garmin 162 and Blue Charts will work for me, both tactically and monetarily. Ya'll have been a BIG help, Much I owe to you!!
Hotspots,
I emailed Garmin and asked if I could retrofit a cablr for both my 162 and 160 blue and all they said is no. I replied to see if there was an adapter, but why wouldnt the guy just tell me that and give me a part number to save us both the agony of e-mails?? They were also vague when I emailed before about why I had to pay for their problem i.e. why I have to pay for a cable to make my FF operate correctly when I bought the unit under the pretense that it would operate correctly... anyway thats another story.. Can you give me a part number for the contraption that will allow me to upload info to my GPS and FF??
I had a 160 blue that I attached a 9-pin RS-232 din connector directly to the 160 wires (blue, brown & black). I then connected a laptop using a serial cable and ran the firmware update program. Go to the Radioshack.com and look up RS-232 pinouts. You can make the attachment mechanism for < $5 if you have a RS232 cable and a laptop. Since the 160 is at end of life or near, you don't need anything 'pretty' just functional enough to get the firmware updated. BTW: The most recent firmware update for the 160 fixed most of my problems.
Thanks anothergirl
I had heard of making your own but I have to admit I am quite skeptical, despitemy years of training installing car stereos in high school...lol I'll take a look into this. Anuthing this cheap cannot be bad!!(Famous Last Words)
Not sure what accessories you might want, but I purchased this package last year. It was on sale for Father's Day for $399. Comes with US Waterways and Lights, Fishing Hot Spots 1 Region, and the AC/PC adapter. I fish a lot of freshwater lakes and the Hot Spots CD is VERY useful. If all you want is the base 162 with the cable, shop around on the sites that other folks have listed.
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Garmin 162 
