Lake charts for GPS?

[Bushleague]

Hello guys, I'd like to find some lake depth charts for northern Alberta that I could put on my hand held Garmin GPS. Just wondering what my options are, what's the best, what's the cheapest ETC. Thanks.

[Stryker2]

I'd be interested in that too!! I have a Garmin Oregon that I'd like to install on.

[CNP]

I've almost given up on my dedicated gps. Use the phone for most stuff now. Navionics app works good for lake charts

[DocMcgillicuddy]

Originally Posted by CNP

I've almost given up on my dedicated gps. Use the phone for most stuff now. Navionics app works good for lake charts

Does the app have many lakes in Alberta natively? How does this work? Sounds handy!

[huntsfurfish]

Here you are.

http://www.navionics.com/en/mobile-pc-app-2

List of lakes is available on Navionics site.

[Bushleague]

Originally Posted by CNP

I've almost given up on my dedicated gps. Use the phone for most stuff now. Navionics app works good for lake charts

Yeah, I don't carry a cell phone, so I was hoping to find something for the GPS.

[SamSteele]

Garmin makes the LakeVu underwater maps that you can either download or get on a SD/microSD card. Most handheld GPS units have an microSD/SD slot in them, but I don't know if they would work? Might be worth a call to Garmin to see.

SS

[Andy44]

Edit: How do you put pictures in posts?

Here's a picture of a map I made for my Garmin.

Cheapest? Do it yourself. I have all my lake maps on my Garmin eTrex 20.

First download QGIS and Google Earth Pro, then download the free Government of Alberta Lake Bathymetry data for whatever lake you want.

Download the .zip with line features (not polygon features) and import the .shp file in QGIS. Right click on your layer and open your attribute table, then count how many features (different depths - 1 line is 1 same depth) you have. For example, the lake has 10 seperate lines ranging from 1m to 10m deep, so you have 10 seperate line features. (all gov. data is in metric by the way).

Save a copy of your shapefile and import it to Google Earth Pro. Add a template with a colour field (I prefer blue and red - blue is deep/red is shallow), and set your number of buckets to match the same number of line features in your attribute table. Once you have your map and template in Google Earth take a screenshoot that encompasses all of it and save it as a JPEG.

Then you just follow these instructions.

http://www8.garmin.com/outdoor/custommaps_instruct.pdf

It's pretty easy to do a JPEG overlay on Google Earth Pro with a screenshot you took from the same exact spot. To make it easier on yourself make sure you're oriented North and looking from right above and not on an angle when taking your screenshot. If you don't do this your picture will be all distorted when you try and overlay it. I also drop pins on my corners to make it easier to overlay later.

Here's the Alberta GIS data for most lakes.

http://ags.aer.ca/alberta-lake-bathymetry-data

[Stryker2]

Andy I've read you could do that. I will give it a try with your instructions. Thanks for sharing.