Time to examine the myth of ‘one-foot contours’

Read any forum thread about lake mapping and you’ll find much discussion of “one-foot contours,” as if that’s the Holy Grail of fishing maps. But like legends of the Grail, many tales of one-foot contours seem to stem more from flights of fancy than fact.

Because many lake maps are merely glitzed up re-packagings of antique charts, even if a map you bought yesterday shows one-foot contours, many of those lines could just be estimates. That’s the case for many paper maps and charts on digital chips.

Are your fishing maps medieval? (Spoiler alert: Many are)

According to legend, when the makers of medieval maps didn’t know what lay beyond the horizon, they inked their parchments “here there be dragons” to prevent unwary sailors from disappearing into uncharted waters.

If only your fishing maps came with similar warnings.

Okay, so your fishing maps might not be medieval, but they’re probably as thorough as you think they are. And while there might not be dragons in the uncharted waters on your maps, there might be fish, and big ones! But how would you know?

Fishing today could lead to a fish-of-a-lifetime tomorrow

A fishing trip today could lead to a fish-of-a-lifetime tomorrow. That’s the genius of Insight Genesis – you can improve your fishing … by going fishing.

Insight Genesis empowers you to make and use custom lake maps from sonar logs recorded with the Lowrance, Simrad or B&G sonar unit already on your boat. To make your custom contour map, you don’t have to survey a lake all at once, driving back and forth and never wetting a line. Instead, you can simply record a sonar log every time you hit the water to fish. Over time, your uploads of data collected in multiple fishing trips will come together to form a master map, full of detailed, one-foot contour lines that identify fish-holding structure.

“Ever since I started using Insight Genesis, I’ve found a lot of good fishing spots on Lake Osakis that didn’t show up on other maps,” says Minnesota fishing guide Scott Merwin. “And I’ve been fishing Osakis for 15 years!”