Garmin maps, not accurate?

[jbmaine]

hi all,

I have a garmin echomap chirp and have been noticing inaccuracies in their maps. For example, today I was on a lake and the map showed a couple of islands that just weren't there. At one point it showed me going right thru an island when I was in 10 ft. of water. Anyone else notice anything like this?

                                                       Thanks

                                                              Jim

[Scott F]

A lot depends on the lake data that was available. Garmin did not go out and map 17,000 lakes. They bought the data from others. Sometimes, that data is good sometimes not so much. The lake map of a lake I do a lot of fishing on is extremely accurate. I could put myself right on the edge of an offshore sunken island in the dark. The contour lines line up almost perfectly with what my depthfinder shows. The good news is, you can create your own much more accurate map of that lake with the software built in to your unit.

[Junger]

1 hour ago, jbmaine said:

hi all,

I have a garmin echomap chirp and have been noticing inaccuracies in their maps. For example, today I was on a lake and the map showed a couple of islands that just weren't there. At one point it showed me going right thru an island when I was in 10 ft. of water. Anyone else notice anything like this?

                                                       Thanks

                                                              Jim

You can try to do a map update, but no, I have not experienced that.

[jbmaine]

thanks,

 I can understand the fishing maps not being super accurate, but I thought the navigation maps should be.

[tander]

Do a update. If you bought it new, you get one free up date.

[shatam]

I have the chirp 93sv and only find that same situation on the river, but that's to be expected on rivers since they are constantly changing, and I already did the update also, so definetly do that with a micro sd card

[Tennessee Boy]

If you compare any two maps you will usually find very significant differences between the two.   One of them must be wrong.  I was fishing with a buddy a few week ago and he told me he wanted to try a spot a friend of his had just won a tournament on.  He said we needed to position the boat by a buoy and throw up on the hump.  I looked at my Lake Master map and didn't see a hump.   My buddy called the guy to make sure we were in the right place.  I pulled up the Navionics map on my phone and sure enough it showed a small hump not far from the buoy.  We threw to where the hump was suppose to be and caught several nice fish.  Before we left,  I ran over the spot a few times and there was no hump.  I guess sometimes it pays to use bad maps.

[NHBull]

On some lakes the Navionics app is far better than the Garmin charts. Heck, on one tournament we relied on our phones more than our graphs

[Junger]

I just got two emails from Garmin:

 

If you experienced issues with 2018.0 and 2018.5 U.S. coastal and Great Lakes cartography charts in NOAA cartography mode, please register your device, and contact Garmin product support for assistance. See our service advisory for instructions

 

If you experienced issues with 2018.0 and 2018.5 U.S. coastal and Great Lakes cartography charts in NOAA cartography mode, we are mailing you an SD™ card so you can update your charts to version 2018.52. Please see our service advisory for instructions.

[jbmaine]

3 hours ago, Junger said:

I just got two emails from Garmin:

 

If you experienced issues with 2018.0 and 2018.5 U.S. coastal and Great Lakes cartography charts in NOAA cartography mode, please register your device, and contact Garmin product support for assistance. See our service advisory for instructions

 

If you experienced issues with 2018.0 and 2018.5 U.S. coastal and Great Lakes cartography charts in NOAA cartography mode, we are mailing you an SD™ card so you can update your charts to version 2018.52. Please see our service advisory for instructions.

I'll check that out.

                     Thanks