I recently got a new elite 5 dsi. It is my first gps unit,so they are new to me. I am getting a 2gb card for it but am curious as to how i can take the waypoints off the card each tournament and store them in a folder on my laptop then reload the card with the next lake. What system do you guys use to get past the waypoint clutter? Thanks

Holy runon sentences... my high school english teacher would be proud

I think you have the right idea.  I have thousands of wpts and keep them in separate files for each lake.  I'm not sure what software program will work for you as Lowrance quit making the one that I use (Map Create 7).  I'm sure there are some out there in the public domain but I can't name anything off hand.

 

You can also put them on your sd card and label the file by the specific lake and store them that way.  You can work directly from the unit to edit and or delete certain wpts though it is pretty slow that way.  When you get a system going you just save them to the card then delete the file from the unit and purge the units memory.  Then you are ready to load a different wpt file.

 

I have so many and have taken years to collect them that I really try to keep them save.  I have them on 2 different sd cards and in 2 different locations in my computer.

 

Good luck to you.  I hope you find a good management tool.

Thanks for your time Jig Man. I will look into that. We fish 8-10 small reservoirs that aren't near big enough to be on a map chip.Most of which are mud bowls with very little contour or structure. For this I am thinking about creating my own by use of 2 gb card. I can buy them in lots of 10 off ebay for about $2.50 ea. Then would carry them in my fishfinder box and get to the certain lake and pop in that chip. Would probably be easier this way they trying to load and unload waypoints from day to day. Any idea on how many waypoints a guy can store on a 2 gb chips? Thanks

You can store way more there than the unit can hold.  I have several thousand on a 512 mb card and it is not close to full.  Wpts don't take up much room at all.

I'm not sure if it's the same with the Elites as it is with the Touch units, but on those you can actually export a region onto a map card and name the file. So basically if I've got a ton of waypoints on a lake, I can make a box around it, go to export region, and all those waypoints are backed up on the card in a file with the name of my choosing. I'd recommend looking over your users manual to see if your unit is capable of this as well. 

 

Another thing worth noting, that unit will store 3000 waypoints without the use of an sd card so if you fish 8 to 10 lakes you can probably get away without even using one.