Mile-high mapper finds what’s missing on many map chips

Which map would YOU rather use for fishing? These images are from maps of the same spot on the same lake. Insight Genesis created the great map on the right.

Many fishing maps for off-the-beaten-path lakes merely mimic old USGS topo maps and lack detail – a challenge that used to frustrate Dave Kooser, who fishes for walleye and bass in Colorado, a state known more for ski slopes than fishing holes.

“Map detail is even less accurate if the body of water has been around for many years, as topo maps were less accurate in the early years and things change underwater through time,” says Kooser, a Colorado TBF member and former Colorado Walleye Association President.

But Kooser isn’t wasting time waiting for a survey crew to stumble upon his favorite lake, he’s mapping it himself with Insight Genesis, the cloud-based service exclusive to the Lowrance community. And he’s finding great fish-holding structure that’s missing on many of the off-the-shelf map chips.

Use Insight Genesis to locate hidden fish-holding structure

Without Insight Genesis’ extremely accurate mapping, it would have been next to impossible to identify the key spots identified on the custom map in this screenshot.

Creating custom maps with Insight Genesis will help you find more fish-holding structure faster. Interpreting and using those maps is the next step in catching more and bigger fish.

We recently asked a Lowrance pro-staffers to record sonar data while fishing on Lake Keowee and Lake of the Ozarks and then upload the data to Insight Genesis and make custom maps. We then asked a few other pro-staffers to look at the maps and describe how they would use the contour layer to target fish, based on fish behaviors. We didn’t even give them the vegetation or composition layers and they still came up with some great spots on Lake Keowee and Lakes of Ozarks to target.