Capabilities for waypoint management have come a long way since the old days when your only option was a blue dot, not to mention the tedious process of adding a name to the mark. Today we can choose an appropriate symbol for everything we come across underwater and give it a name that will help us stay organized with our waypoints. The following is how I organize my waypoints. I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but this system has worked great for me!
Choosing a symbol: When I go out scanning I am always looking for something different or marking transitions. When I find that isolated patch of grass, weed line or boulder, I want to use a symbol that I can quickly refer to at a later time. I can’t tell you how many times I have used this to find new water during a tournament. Let’s say you get on a deep grass bite in 15ft of water right on the weed line during a tournament. If you decide to run a pattern on that, you can quickly look through your chart for the grass symbol and figure out the depth and even type of weeds based on the name.
Naming Convention: Equally important to organizing your waypoints is a naming convention. The Lowrance HDS touch screen units make it so quick and easy to add a name to your waypoints it makes organization super simple. Going back to my deep grass example, when I am scanning grass I am either marking the weed line or isolated clumps of grass. So if I find a weed line in 15ft of water I will go down the edge with side scan and every 25 or 50 ft I’ll drop a weed symbol marker with a name that goes something like this: “CoonWL15ft” If I’m marking an edge, I will usually only name the first and last symbol to save time, but you could name them all as well. Now fast forward back to the tournament day, if you need to quickly find more coontail edges in 15 foot of water, you can simply scroll around on your chart, look for weed symbols and seek out those around 15ft and say “WL” for weed line.
The same principal can be applied to basically any cover you come across out on the lake and I guarantee you if you start following this process, It will help you find fish faster.
-KM