screen, created a horizontal view on a map,” Huff says. “It’s
taking the exact same signal that you’ve always seen on a
sonar display to a map view.”
The system “picks up” vegetation information as well,
though it only maps vegetation when at least 20 percent of
the water column is comprised of grass. Short carpets of
grass won’t register.
Social Mapping
The foundation of the C-Map Genesis system is “social
mapping,” which is the company’s term for crowd-sourced
map data.
How it works is an angler records sonar data while on the
water using any Lowrance HDS Gen2 or newer unit, including
the Elite Ti series, uploads that information to a cloud-based
system, and then the information is compiled with other
users’ data to create more detailed maps.
Through C-Map Genesis, any angler can create a free
account and have access to the complete Social Map data-
base. Just sign up for the Genesis Social membership, slip an
SD or Micro-SD card (depending on which type your sonar
unit accepts) into a computer, and download the maps. Pop
the card in the depth finder to pull up the maps.
Creating a new map is simple, too, by punching a three-
button sequence. The Lowrance will record the data, which
can then be uploaded to the Social Map site. The system con-
verts the information to a map for the user to download back
onto the card and use, but it becomes available to other
users as well.
Private, Premium Mapping Options
If you’re not willing to share your mapping info with other
anglers (and who could blame you?), C-Map Genesis offers
an alternative in its Genesis Edge program, which costs $99
per year or $14.99 per month.
Genesis Edge allows users to download the same crowd-
sourced maps and contribute new information if they desire.
But Genesis Edge subscribers can also choose to keep their
custom-made maps private. The other big advantages are
the bottom hardness and vegetation maps, which aren’t
available with the free membership. They show anglers
important transition areas, edges and structures for position-
ing the boat just right for casts.
Huff, an avid angler himself, has tapped into both bottom
hardness and vegetation mapping with good success on
lakes spanning from Florida to Minnesota.
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2017 I FLWFISHING.COM
HOW TO MAP: START RECORDING
1. Insert an sD or micro-sD card into the depth finder
head unit, and bring up the chart.
2. select “chart options.”
3. select “advanced.”
4. select “Record sonar.”
5. a red flashing dot indicates that the unit is recording.
“I’m so spoiled now because I can hardly launch the boat
without it,” he says. “Every time you make a cast, you know
you’re actually throwing to something that might have a fish
on it.
“Let’s say you’re in Florida, and you’re going along a whole
bunch of yards and yards and yards of weed edges, and
there’s one little area that’s a shell bed,” says Huff.
“Sometimes it might just be the size of a boat, and then it’s
surrounded by muck or sand or something like that. Those
little spots will stick out on your bottom hardness map.”
Instead of casting toward a waypoint on a shell bed, the
map shows the outline of the shell bed, so the angler can
position the boat via GPS for a pitch or cast to any part of
the structure. It works the same way in mucky, mud-bot-
tom lakes – with hard-bottom rock veins and the like stand-
ing out.
In deeper grass lakes, rather than having to hover over
the edge of a deep grass bed to make accurate presenta-
tions, now you can graph the grass edge first and have a per-
fect picture of the points, cuts and other features.
It’s also helpful for patterning fish. For example, bass
might be situated on hard-bottom points in a particular
depth range, or on shell beds along the edge of a grass bed,
or on points on the outside edge of a weedline. With the
map, those types of spots are obvious.
And in spring or fall, the maps help highlight transition
pathways in reservoirs, where bass might leave spawning
areas and follow a series of points, channels, rocky banks or
grass beds into deeper water. The combination of contours,
hardness and vegetation on the map paints a complete pic-
ture if the entire area has been scanned.
“For small lakes I would use the Genesis map the entire
time if it’s a complete map,” adds Huff. “If I go to Mille Lacs [or
any large lake], and the entire lake doesn’t have Genesis data,
but a lot of the best spots do, I’d switch to a more complete
map for navigation, basically any time I have my big motor
running, but when I stand up to go on my trolling motor I’d
switch to my Genesis map.”
Color Gradation
C-Map Genesis “shows” its users important information
using colors and shades. For instance, the darker the shade
of blue, the deeper the water. Grass, logically, shows up as
green. And bottom hardness ranges from dark orange for
the hardest bottom to lighter orange, tan and pale yellow for
the softest bottom.
Users can also highlight specific depth ranges on their
Lowrance units, which is handy for avoiding dangerous shal-
low obstructions or quickly dialing in on a specific zone
throughout a fishery. The depth shading is also handy for
locating shallow areas with deep access nearby, which is a
common productive scenario at certain times of year.
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