There was a time when only commercial and charter fishermen could afford the luxury of Global Positioning System or Loran-C electronic navigation equipment. Fortunately, this is no longer the case.
GPS technology was developed by the Department of Defense. It relied on a constellation of satellites orbiting the earth that provide precise information on time and location. It was high tech, and high cost.
However, new GPS receivers and technology are reaching out to encompass more boaters from the smallest fishing boats to the biggest ships at sea. Now, GPS receivers are less expensive, feature-rich and easier to use than ever before. High-resolution graphics, built-in plotters and ease-of-use now are standard on GPS navigation products.
The fastest-growing segment of GPS receivers are portable, hand-held units, portable receivers offering lots of advantages. They can be used on a boat or on shore, or taken from boat to boat. In addition, portables offer a complete range of navigation information from latitude/longitude, to waypoint definition and storage, to plotter screens that allow even a novice to navigate from point to point in any weather, day or night.
Using latitude and longitude, GPS receivers display information on position, bearing, distance to destination, speed over ground, cross track error, estimated time of arrival and a number of other useful readouts. With the ability to store up to 100 named waypoints in memory, anglers can use the waypoint database to record their favorite fishing spots, underwater structure and other locations. For example, a saltwater angler can confidently head offshore to his favorite fishing grounds and using a GPS receiver return to the same spot time and time again. In the event of bad weather, you can safely and quickly find your way to home port.
Fresh-water fishermen can identify the location of fish-holding structures on their favorite lakes and follow their electronic bread crumbs back to these top producing spots, day or night.
Some of the more sophisticated units have huge memory banks of NOAA charts that provide detailed information on marinas, depth contours and navigational aids in thousands of areas throughout the world.
With a cursor key, you easily could home in on great upper bay fishing locations, plot a course to them, and if it's connected to an auto-pilot, sit back and relax while the system takes you to your destination. It only takes the push of a button for the captain to display routes, track progress and safely maneuver in and out of harbors, across oceans and between known points.
