Backup Your Waypoints for Maximum Performance

This guest post was written by Todd Hollowell, FLW Tour Pro and Host of the WFN TV show the “Bass Dr.”If you’re using your electronics to their maximum potential, then it’s likely that you are accumulating thousands of waypoints on your unit. Did you know that your Lowrance unit is similar to your computer? The more information you store on it, the more memory it takes up and slows the performance on your unit. This Prescription of the Week will help you back up your waypoints and save the data you’ve accumulated over the course of the year.

First, you’ll want an SD Card that has a minimum of 2GB in memory. I like to use one that has 4GB. Next, let’s take a look at how to save your waypoints to the SD Card. Hit the Page button and scroll over to the Wrench/Gear screen. Select Waypoints, Routes, and Trails. If you are simply backing up your waypoints, or you are transferring to another HDS Unit – select Version 4 and press enter. But Lowrance gives you many more options than that. If you want to transfer to an older Lowrance unit, like an LCX unit, select Version 3. If you want to transfer to say Mapcreate software, select Version 2. And if you want to transfer to a program like Google Earth, select GPX.

Next, make sure you select the correct memory card to save your waypoints to and press enter. Now, you’ll want to give your file a name. I’d suggest you name this the date that you backed up your unit, like “January 2014.” Or, if you’re like me and visit many different lakes, I’d suggest labeling your file specific to that particular lake, like “Erie 2014.” I actually save my waypoints to an SD card, and then erase my unit every time I leave a body of water to make sure the units are performing as quickly as possible and so that I’m not bogging down my unit with thousands of waypoints on lakes that I won’t fish for another year. But more importantly, it backs up your waypoints so that you don’t lose them! Just make sure you don’t lose your SD card in the process! I back up my SD card on my laptop or my desktop computer at home, so that my data is safe and secure with little chance of me ever losing it.All of this information is located in the user manual for your Lowrance unit, along with instructions on how to load these waypoints back up into your unit. For more tips like these, make sure you like the Bass Dr. page on Facebook and follow the Bass Dr. on Twitter, or check us out on the web at BassDr.com. See you on the water!