GEAR
CUSTOM MAPPING
CUSTOM MAPPING
WITH C-MAP GENESIS
I
CHART CONTOUR LINES, BOTTOM HARDNESS AND GRASS BED LOCATIONS
42
f there’s one knock on most modern digital mapping tools
used for fishing during the last decade, it’s that the infor-
mation on the maps is available to anyone willing to pay
for it. There are no secrets on the maps, and everyone lined
up at tournament takeoff has the same contour lines at their
disposal. Plus, some mapping programs are less-than-com-
plete, even for well-trafficked major fisheries.
In short, there’s no competitive advantage available to
anglers who are willing to go above and beyond.
Several companies have tried to buck that trend with soft-
ware and hardware packages that can draw custom “sonar
maps” on a depth finder’s screen. While several of those are
perfectly capable and valuable tools, particularly for finding
isolated boulders and the like, they usually still require that
the user be adept at interpreting sonar information because
the “map” is more or less a collage of sonar returns.
Another solution is a user-generated mapping program
that converts sonar information to the type of contour line
maps that most bass anglers are familiar with and allows
anglers to create their own maps. Several companies have
flirted with the concept, but perhaps none has figured it out
as well as C-Map Genesis. The company, which partners with
Lowrance on its mapping system, offers anglers several valu-
able tools. The first is a cache of crowd-sourced map data
generated by other users that paints a very accurate, up-to-
date picture of the bottom of many lakes, rivers and reser-
voirs in the country. The second is the ability to create cus-
tom GPS maps of any fishery, with overlaid bottom hardness
and vegetation information.
By Curtis Niedermier
The custom mapping, in particular, has some serious
advantages for tournament anglers who need to decipher
patterns quickly and line up on prime spots more efficiently.
Complete details are available at genesismap.com.
How C-Map Makes Maps
According to Greg Huff, business acquisition and market-
ing manager at C-Map Genesis, the system converts depth,
bottom hardness and vegetation information from “vertical”
sonar returns – both traditional sonar and DownScan – into
flat, “overhead” maps.
“When you’re looking at your 2-D broadband sonar dis-
play on the water, you can tell if there’s a hard bottom or a
soft bottom based on whether it has a thick or thin line,” says
Huff. “Because of the way sonar works, it’ll bounce off a hard
bottom faster. It’ll bounce off a soft bottom slower. Your
depth finder translates that into colors on the screen. You’ll
sometimes see a double echo on a really, really hard bottom.
A bigger indicator is going to be the thick yellow line for a
hard-bottom area, and a thinner yellow line for soft bottom.
“With that information, you may know there’s a hard bot-
tom under the boat, but you don’t know how far it goes or
how it relates to the structure nearby. When you can actually
see those areas, the size and the shape of them, that’s a real-
ly powerful tool, especially for pre-fishing.”
The latter is exactly what C-Map accomplishes.
“The people that invented this technology figured out how
to take that same data for not only depth contours, but hard-
ness, too, and instead of a vertical view like on a sonar
FLWFISHING.COM I NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2017