In your opinion how important are lake contours that some but not all map companies provide? Doing entry pt 70 up through Moose, Mountain and Pine lakes so I figure contours may be helpful for midsummer lake trout. It appears that McKenzie might be the best in that regard but their website is by far the worst of all the map companies. Some companies have no contours while some have a few lakes with them.

Most lake contours are from MN DNR mapping which can be found for free on the DNR lake finder site.

I pack in my Garmin and use the map create while I am trolling around and build my own maps of the areas I fish. Way more accurate that way. some of them maps show 40 ft holes and there's a freaking island there.

cwallace: "I pack in my Garmin and use the map create while I am trolling around and build my own maps of the areas I fish. Way more accurate that way. some of them maps show 40 ft holes and there's a freaking island there. "

I do this as well.

For many years I have been making maps downloaded from Navionics on paper before my trips. Last year they clearly showed how invaluble they truly are, when crumpled up they performed excellent as fire starter no more slow starting smokey fires I highly recomend brining some. As for lake mapping they are complete dog snot, mapped humps topping at 8' in 20' of water completely non-existant, reefs between islands as dependable as a politician with his hands in his own pockets most BWCA lakes were mapped in the 1950's and 1960's and never updated. I will be bringing a graph from now on.

I’ve had a little better experience with Navionics than nooneuno. I do agree that many of the lakes were probably mapped using much lower tech than we have today so you may have some inaccuracies. However, I download the area map on my phone before we go up and use the Navionics app to navigate. This has served me well. It’s not livescope but works for our needs. The only way I would need/want a sonar would be if targeting lake trout. I feel as if the walleye, bass and pike will be where they should be.

nooneuno: "...maps downloaded from Navionics... are complete dog snot, "

Agree. I think they have a couple guys in an office in Chicago who smoke pot and dream up lake depths for their maps.

iCallitMaize: It’s not livescope but works for our needs."

I would much rather have an accurate map than Livescope, but I bring both lol.

You are all way more advanced than I. Seems to me that I’ve never had an issue with just tossing an X-Rap behind the ol’ Magic, sticking the rod under my leg, and seeing what happens. I can only aspire to the next level to which you all are operating.