Lake Maps

Is there a good online site for viewing Lake Maps?  I'm unable to find a box of fishing maps I've purchased at tackle shops in the past, and want to do some better planning for upcoming trips.  Places like Lake Berryessa, New Melones, Don Pedro etc want to do some research before heading out there.  Free or Paid as long as it's worth paying for.

Check out the Navionics Web App, which is available online for free at https://webapp.navionics.com/?lang=en#boating@10&key=%7BqnjFnryhV.  That link should take you to Lake Berryessa, and then you can navigate to lakes anywhere in the country and to offshore areas.  For several years when I was going to fish in a lake I would take screen shots of the Navionics maps, paste the screen shots into a word document, print off the document, cut out the maps, and laminate them for use on the lake.  You can identify places where you want to fish on the maps and feel your way out to those spots by using the depths shown on your fish finder and by triangulating off features on the shoreline. And you can put waypoints on features which you locate using sonar, or places where you consistently find fish.

But I finally bought the Navionics maps, and immediately wished I had bought them sooner.  They're extremely useful, and you can go precisely to features shown on the maps.  If you do most of your fishing in shallow water right next to shore, Navionics maps may not be particularly useful because it's so easy to locate yourself with respect to the shoreline, but if you fish on large lakes and away from shore they can be invaluable for fishing.

Thanks Pete!  I have been trying to install Navionics on my phone, but it's broken, just wont ever load even after uninstalling and re-installing it.  But I also think it wanted some sort of sign in, and it failed to let me register too.  But good to see I can just use a good ol' browser!  That helps a LOT for planning! 

Check out some lakes with complicated underwater topography, like Lake Shasta.

I've compared Navionics on shasta vs. my own mapping from the FF mapping feature. It's GENERALLY correct but there is a lot of microstructure that the maps just wont show. Especially with a highly dynamic lake level, stuff moves around sometimes and points aren't where they're always supposed to be. Even on other lakes, navionics tends to miss the microstructure entirely.

The paper maps of Shasta they sell at Phil's Propeller in town seem to be more accurate than Navionics, but the maps they sell aren't waterproof (why? beats me...).

I have used the Navionics maps extensively on Flathead Lake in Montana, and have found them to be invaluable.  However, like SaltyTherapy, I quickly came to recognize that they contain some inaccuracies, and that they don't show a lot of smaller features.  For example, the Navionics maps will allow you to go accurately to a mound far out in the lake which rises from 200 feet up to 60 feet, but they may fail to show many small details of that mound.  They might show a side of the mound as a smooth slope, but by moving and jigging along that slope, you discover that it contains various ridges, gullies, pinnacles, and other features which aren't shown on the Navionics maps. And often those undisclosed features consistently hold fish.

This year I bought a Humminbird fish finder which includes the "Autochart Live" mapping features, and I went to a bunch of the areas I had questions about and mapped them.  The results were very interesting. For example, the first picture below shows the Navionics map of the top of a mound.  I knew from fishing the area for many years that there are various discrepancies between the Navionics map and the actual underwater topography.  In particular, I knew that there is a pinnacle or mound at Waypoint 004 which isn't shown on the Navionics map, and which consistently holds fish.  The second picture below shows the Autochart Live map which I made which shows the actual underwater topography.  I could give many similar examples.

Notwithstanding the occasional inaccuracies of the Navionics maps, I still find them very useful, if not essential, for fishing on Flathead Lake. And since the lake is 27 miles north to south and up to 15.5 miles east to west, contains 197 square miles of water, and must have required a huge amount of effort to map, I'm not surprised that the Navionics maps contain some inaccuracies.

The paper maps of Shasta they sell at Phil's Propeller in town seem to be more accurate than Navionics, but the maps they sell aren't waterproof (why? beats me...).

Probably because non-waterproof paper will fall apart and need to be replaced sooner than durable waterproof maps.  For the same reason, some knife manufacturers make knives in camouflage colors, hoping that people will lose them and have to buy a new knife.

but the maps they sell aren't waterproof (why? beats me...).

So you have to buy another when you get it wet.

I complained on the Google Play Store about the Navionics app not working for me, and they responded saying disable your ad blocker.  So I was able to get it installed and sign up for an account. Using a free trial for two weeks, but looks like base cost is 22$ a year for the subscription.  Seems cheap enough, but will see if I feel like it's useful enough after the trial to pay for it.  But glad it's free online, which is great for me planning upcoming trips.

On the App

Map options - Layers - Sonarchart - Overlays - Relief Shading

You're welcome.

The only lakes around these parts with full detail are Folsom and CL, but for the salt and the bay its a game changer.

Does anybody use the Navionics on app on an iPhone? I have another mapping app I like to run on my iPhone, and was wondering if it's going to suck my battery dry if I use both apps...

Does anybody use the Navionics on app on an iPhone? I have another mapping app I like to run on my iPhone, and was wondering if it's going to suck my battery dry if I use both apps...

I’ve run it while using my stealth since it only has a basic FF. Didn’t seem to drain the battery too much. I made sure to download the maps for offline use.