Thread: Discussion on Lowrance Elite 5 DSI/Chartplotter ....

ABSOLUTELY ... Welcome to the site, Russ.

ANY input on the capabilities & experiences with the E5DSI unit is welcomed ... regardless of what species of fish, or country you're from/in. That's the whole point of this thread ... learn & share !!

... cp

Originally Posted by Barnacle Bill

Glad to see some input from down under. I had no idea what you were talking about so I had to look Barramundi up. Looks like it might be a good eatin fish. Do you have anything similar to Crappie down there?

G'day Bill

Australia is a very dry continent and as such, has few permanent water sources. The fish that have evolved in inland parts have to be very specialist, including being able to survive buried in mud when the river or lake dries completely. The fish that are most successful at this seem to always be small and bony.

That said, we have a few major rivers and some nice eating and catching species evolved in them. One that immediately came to mind, when I read your question about whether we have fish similar to Crappies, is the Golden Perch (Macquaria ambigua). This fish is also known as Callop, Yellowbelly and Murray River Perch. It is a great fighter and has been successfully raised in aquaculture facilities so that the fingerlings can be used to re-stock rivers and dams.

Unfortunately for me, these fish live in the "other half" of Australia - and I don't. Most of Australia's population live on the coast, so saltwater fishing predominates. I am extremely lucky to live right on the banks of a river, about 500 metres from where the river meets the Indian Ocean. So, I am becoming an estuary specialist. My river is tidal and can vary in depth from 0.3 metres (1 foot) to 6.0 metres (19') over a six hour period, and then empty out again in the same amount of time. It makes for very interesting fishing.

Edit: Barramundi are a bit hit and miss as an eating fish. They must go to the freshwater reaches of rivers as a part of their breeding cycle. During their time in freshwater their eating quality suffers badly. After being in saltwater for a time, the eating quality improves. I, personally, am not a great fan, and I tend to release all that I catch. I don't know if you have the saying over in the States, but over here any fish that you catch that is of dubious eating quality is known as a "neighbour fish." That is, you catch it, then give it to your neighbour. Barramundi are in that class.

Cheers

Russ

Originally Posted by away

G'day Bill

Australia is a very dry continent and as such, has few permanent water sources. The fish that have evolved in inland parts have to be very specialist, including being able to survive buried in mud when the river or lake dries completely. The fish that are most successful at this seem to always be small and bony.

That said, we have a few major rivers and some nice eating and catching species evolved in them. One that immediately came to mind, when I read your question about whether we have fish similar to Crappies, is the Golden Perch (Macquaria ambigua). This fish is also known as Callop, Yellowbelly and Murray River Perch. It is a great fighter and has been successfully raised in aquaculture facilities so that the fingerlings can be used to re-stock rivers and dams.

Unfortunately for me, these fish live in the "other half" of Australia - and I don't. Most of Australia's population live on the coast, so saltwater fishing predominates. I am extremely lucky to live right on the banks of a river, about 500 metres from where the river meets the Indian Ocean. So, I am becoming an estuary specialist. My river is tidal and can vary in depth from 0.3 metres (1 foot) to 6.0 metres (19') over a six hour period, and then empty out again in the same amount of time. It makes for very interesting fishing.

Edit: Barramundi are a bit hit and miss as an eating fish. They must go to the freshwater reaches of rivers as a part of their breeding cycle. During their time in freshwater their eating quality suffers badly. After being in saltwater for a time, the eating quality improves. I, personally, am not a great fan, and I tend to release all that I catch. I don't know if you have the saying over in the States, but over here any fish that you catch that is of dubious eating quality is known as a "neighbour fish." That is, you catch it, then give it to your neighbour. Barramundi are in that class.

Cheers

Russ

Thanks Russ. I've got to remember that "neighbour fish".

Took a couple of pics of brush piles, while testing my GPS coordinate finding skills.





I had manually downloaded some GPS coords for this lake, and went to find out if they were accurate & if I could find them. The unit nailed them dead on !! These pics were taken while drifting in the area, where there are multiple other brush piles ... which I have the coords of, but had not yet put into my unit. They were just an afterthought, and not my main mission.

I did find out something relative to how I intend to use the unit, though. As I was approaching a waypoint, dragging a jig, I realized that ... by the time the brushpile image was fully on the screen, even at 0.5mph speed, the brushpile was about midways of the boat. That's when my jig made contact with the brush, as it was trailing back at about a 45* angle.
SO ... if I'm fishing alone, I intend to find the waypoint & then mark it with a marker buoy .. THEN fish it. Otherwise, my jigs or hooks may find the brush BEFORE the unit does !! (luckily for me, I was using weedless jigs, but even so .. still managed to hang up & lose a couple)

If I'm fishing with a partner, I will be able to warn them of the coming brush, and the depth of the top of it, so they can adjust the depth of their baits ... advantage partner !!

These were not the best brushpile images that I saw, and even they would have made a better picture ... if I had not had the split screen on. But, this was my first attempt at all this ... and I learned some things ... so, even though I only caught a bunch of dinks this trip, fishing was a secondary factor, as I was really more interested in testing out the unit's capabilities (& mine to utilize them). Fairly successful trip, in that regard, IMHO.

... cp

As an additional note, in case one of you E5DSI owners gets someone to give up some of their super secret GPS coordinates, and you want to manually put them into your unit (before you even go to the lake) ... here's how :

Click Menu button
Arrow down to New Waypoint
Click Enter button
Use Up arrow to highlight Lat/Long numbers line
Click Enter button
Use up/down arrows to change coord numbers - R/L arrows to move to next number & from Latitude to Longitude box
Click Enter button when correct Lat/Long numbers are entered
Use Down Arrow to highlight SAVE
Click Enter button

Your new GPS coordinate is now saved in your unit. You will have to go through all of these steps, for each new coord you want to add.

I just added over 80 coordinates, sitting on the couch at home, using these instructions. Checked the units internal chartplotter map of the lake ... and they're all right where they should be !!

.... cp

G'day all,

I was reading the post (above) about entering waypoints that someone else may have given you, into your Elite 5 DSI. It strikes me as a very arduous, slow process to do it within the E5DSI unit (especially for those whom have to sit in their boat while doing so.) I got to thinking, and doing some research on the 'net and I have come up with a cunning plan that lets you enter all the data using your PC.

It works something like this:

1) Enter waypoints into a database, using a simple front-end form
2) Save the waypoints into a tab delimited file called data.txt
3) Convert the data.txt file to a data.usr file that the Lowrance E5DSI can read, then save to the microSD card for the unit.
4) Load the waypoints into the E5DSI from the card

I have found a way of very simply doing steps 2,3 and 4 and can now type all of my waypoints into a spreadsheet to create the data.txt file. The problem with Excel is that I can't easily filter the data. For example, if I'm going to Lake Somewhere, then I really only want the waypoints for Lake Somewhere. With Excel it is not as easy to extract just the data that I want. So, I have built an Access database that allows me to enter the data and can filter just the information that I need. (This doesn't mean that you can't just load every waypoint that you have in one hit, it just gives some more flexibility.) Now I am working on automating the creation of the data.txt file. So far so good.

What I am assuming is that because I need to enter my waypoints in the format of Degrees and Decimal Minutes, everyone else is too. And that is my question. Those of you whom have entered waypoints manually, was it in the format DD MM.MMMMMM for Latitude and DDD MM.MMMMMM for Longitude? I need to know this because once I have perfected this application I intend to make it available to you all for free. I want it to work in every case, not just for some who just happen to have their E5DSI set up the same way as I do. I need this information so that I know which fields the user has to enter the data into and which fields the program will automatically enter the data into.

From the prototype, I can tell you that I can enter about eight waypoints using my PC, in the time it takes me to enter one in the E5DSI. The main increase in speed is where I choose to add a waypoint name of my own (rather than the one that the E5DSI allocates by default) and then a description of the waypoint. Thumbing through all of those characters in the unit is a pain.

So, can I have a show of hands please? Are all of your E5DSI's set up to input degrees and decimal minutes?

Cheers

Russ

Hey, Mate .... my problem with the E5DSI was that the coordinates I was getting WAS in Decimal Degrees, and the unit is set to receive only GPS coordinates. I found a website that converted long/lat numbers into four different formats, and used that to change the numbers over to what the unit used. Here's the website : GPS Coordinate Converter, Maps and Info

I think on some of the Humminbird units, there's a "choice" menu for what format you use for the coordinates. I've found no such menu for the E5DSI ... just the GPS settings menu, as explained in the previous posts.

After I got all 90 sets of lat/long numbers converted & written down ... it took me about 30-45mins to manually place them into the unit. Once I got the button pressing sequence down, I was jammin'em in pretty fast

As I understand it, you can mark a waypoint (while on the water) with a couple of button presses ... but, I haven't tried that, yet. I had the unit out this weekend, and did go to a few of the waypoints I'd manually converted/entered ... and the unit took me right to the brush piles !! All I had to do was keep zooming down as I approached the waypoint icon on the screen, and once I got it down to the 20ft range (the lowest it goes) ... and got the triangle (boat) icon centered & directly over the waypoint mark ... the brush pile image started coming on screen.

... cp

G'day cp. I hear you!

I have done some more faffing around and I'm fairly sure that the only way to enter waypoints into the E5DSI is in degrees and decimal minutes. These do get converted internally and the actual data in the waypoint file includes both the decimal degrees and degrees decimal minutes. I have written the database for entering waypoints in degrees decimal minutes, but could just as easily write a second database that enters them in decimal degrees.


I spent the afternoon testing the final product and it works well. It has all kinds of error "catching" stuff that prevents the user from entering the data in the wrong format (but won't stop you from entering incorrect data, of course.)

Basically it has a form that has Lat, lon, Icon, Waypoint name, Waypoint description fields. I didn't bother with the rest, but a later version might include stuff like altitude, notes, url and other stuff. Essentially, all you do is type the values into the database. Once finished, you insert the memory card into your PC, click a button and that's it! All of the waypoints get copied to the card in a flash. This means that it is a simple matter of putting the card into the E5DSI, load the waypoints from the card and its all over.

As it happens, I learned a lot about converting different formats and it shouldn't be hard to write a version of the program that can convert Hummingbird files to Lowrance files, or Raymarine files to Lowrance files, or pretty much anything else to Lowrance, for that matter. That would open up a World of possibilities for swapping waypoints.

As I said earlier, I intend to set the program up so that the data can be filtered to exclude or include waypoints using a simple query, but that will have to come a little bit later. All I have to do now is package it into a stand-alone program and find a place to store it on the 'net, where anyone who wants it can access it.

Cheers

Russ