I plan to fish a kayak tournament, but before the off-limits period will be on the lake in a boat to cover water faster. I want to mark specific waypoints while on the water in the boat and then transfer to the unit on my kayak before the tournament. What's the best way to do this?

Can you export your waypoints from the boat graph to an SD card then load them to your kayak unit? There are options to export all or export individual waypoints. This is pretty simple as long as you are using the same brand equipment (Humminbird , Garmin, etc.)

If going on a friends boat, go to the waypoint management screen and sort by newest-oldest then look for the date stamp. That should help you pinpoint exactly the WPs to export to your kayak.

Be careful not to overwrite your old kayak waypoints with your new data.

1 minute ago, stk44 said:

Be careful not to overwrite your old kayak waypoints with your new data.

Yes, I am concerned about this...

Is the brand on sonars the same in the two boats?

What units are we talking about?

On my humminbird helix units, if I insert an SD card, a message comes up and I have the option to load the waypoints. This keeps the data on the SD card and does not overwrite anything. For peace of mind, have another SD card where you backup your kayak WPs in advance. This way it’s pretty risk-free if you make a mistake.

First, I would back up my home lake data to a separate card and name it for proper ID.

Then use a new/different card for your tournament lakes.

Then just plug and play as needed.

Something of interest ~

After collecting 8 years of pins that were not stored with much of a plan.

When I replaced my units recently, I chose not to bring those WPs with me

Actually erased the cards so I couldn't double clutch.

Since then I now mark 3 and only 3 specific targets.

1. Boat access points.

2. Hazards to navigation (prop eaters)

3. My boat position to fish whatever structure or cover I'm fishing.

   Experience taught me that I will know where to cast when I get there.

   Some WPs are weather/wind specific, but so is the fishing right there.

   This has cut down on my screen clutter and all confusion as to what I'm fishing

   and where the boat should be without burning fish.

Finally, and this is like the Law - ALWAYS trust the way points.

Good Luck

🙂

A-Jay

I use a hand held GPS for situations like this.

34 minutes ago, gim said:

I use a hand held GPS for situations like this.

What product/model do you use? (Links if poss)

If you have cellular service, you could always drop a pin on your phone. You could review this later to get the coordinates and enter them into your graph.

This might be an alternative if you don’t have a ton of way points to input and you are 100% sure you will have service.

What brand of sonar are you using??

3 hours ago, FryDog62 said:

What product/model do you use? (Links if poss)

Sorry, I can't check on my notifications anymore, so I just happened to see this now.

I use a discontinued Lowrance H20C. That probably won't help you. It's compatible with my graphs on my boat which is primarily why I bought it many years ago.

The concept itself will work though. Bring a hand held with you in the boat, mark your way points, and then simply bring the hand held with you in the yak later.

I did this for years before I had my own boat because I would go in other people's boats.

2 hours ago, Jig Man said:

What brand of sonar are you using??

H’bird Xplore

I am hesitant to offer suggestions since my Humminbirds are not the same generation as yours and they may have changed the procedure.

If you have the manual you can get the information that you need by looking in the waypoint management section. If you don’t have a manual you can download it.

One of the first things I did when I bought mine was dowload the manual, save it to an sd card, take it to a printer and have it printed and bound. I carry it in my boat so I can reference things which I have forgotten.

1 hour ago, FryDog62 said:

H’bird Xplore

If you are saying you have an Xplore on the boat and in the kayak, you have two options to transfer your waypoints:

1. Export the waypoints to an SD card and import them on the kayak fish finder.

2. Select the waypoints on your boats fish finder and import them to the one boat network app on your phone. You can then import these waypoints from the one boat network app to you kayak fish finder

Option 1 is what I do for my Helix’s and it’s just a few button presses.

P.S. I would 100% make sure all of your waypoints are backed up to SD cards if they are not already.

I've done this many time as I change electronics frequently.

There's a format, I think it's GPX, that's general for waypts which most GPS can write and you can upload to any device. I've used this method for different brands and different generation devices. I got waypts back from in the '80s, pushing 300 now, on my new Garmins. I used them on Champlain last July after 11 years and there were still fish on some of those spots.