Finding lines on a GPS

[Shade]

On many Fishing reports from the Oak I see :Fished 27N Line or 25N Line.

Question - I have a Raymarine A60, How do I find 27N Line or 25N Line on my GPS? In other words what dio I need to do to find those areas? I mainly fish out of Olcott but I would like to see if I could pull that information up if I needed.

Thanks,

Howie

[momay4000]

Howie,

When I mention 32 W line or 34 W line, I'm referring to "minutes" of longitude. When I say 17N or 18N lines I'm referring to latitude. I don't usually mention latitude lines b/c it varies port to port b/c of the contour of the southern shore of the lake and I'd rather reference depth. In front of I-Bay, the heading at the pier head is about 77°32' of longitude. As you head west, the minutes of longitude increase to 33W, 34W, etc. until it changes to 78° and starts all over again.

D=degrees, M=minutes, S=seconds

Some GPS units instead of reading as DD° MM.MMMM' of latitude, they read as DD° MM' SS". If your reading is 77° 34' 30" that equals 77° 34.50' W. (b/c 30 seconds is 0.5 of a minute)

If you have 77° 34' 45", it would equal 77° 34.75' (b/c 45 seconds is .75 of a minute)

The seconds aren't really important b/c I typically don't break it down to that much detail, instead I'll just mark a waypoint and give the "minute" lines as a general reference area.

Hope this helps....

- Chris

[Shade]

Momay,

I understand degrees. Here in Olcott we have 78 degrees. What I heard on the radio was someone telling someone else to head to 25N. What hw said was do you know how to find lines on your GPS. If I were to put a heading for 25N should my GPS say N78.25?

Howie

[momay4000]

Howie - he's mentioning a North line of latitude (i.e. a depth line heading north), not longitude.

- Chris

[Squid]

The number is reffering the second number of longitude so if the are at the 25 line it would be 78 25 00.

[LongLine]

From the oak site - approx depths at the lines:

http://www.attheoak.com/taylor/lat-depths.html

Tom B.

(LongLine)

[Tim Bromund]

Howie, I responded with this same message to your PM, but since it sounds like there is a bit of general confusion out there, I'm reposting it here in the general forum as well:

When you hear people talking in coordinates like that, they are looking at the 2nd set of lat or lon numbers (minutes). For example. Olcott Harbor is at 43 deg 20 min and 210 seconds (or thereabouts) North Latitude.

In our part of the world, each minute of latitude is approximately 1 mile apart, so from Olcott, the 25N line is approximately 5 miles offshore, 27 line is 7 miles offshore, 30 line is 10 miles out and so on.

Minutes of longitude are approx .75 miles apart. Olcott is at 78 deg 42 min and 540 sec West Longitude, Wilson, six miles to the west, is 78 deg 50 min 09 sec West Longitude.

So basically if you hear someone on the radio say they are at the 25 and 46 lines, you know they are approximately 5 miles north and 3 miles west of Olcott.

Another example: the 27 and 52 lines would be 7 miles out and a little over a mile west of Wilson. That would be from Olcott's perspective anyways. Wilson is at the 19N line so in real distance, the 27 line is actually approx 8 miles offshore at Wilson.

Hopefully that made sense to you. Please let me know if you need further clarification or if I just managed to confuse you more

Tim

[momay4000]

Tim,

That is a very nice explanation. Here's a topographic map of the lake (I think there's a link to this on the Professional site).

http://demo.geogarage.com/noaa/?lat=43. ... 875&zoom=9

Play around with moving the map until you see the gray circle in the middle with a white cross hairs. If you move the gray circle to a point on the map, it'll show you GPS coordinates in the far left corner of exactly the gray circle and it'll show you exactly what Tim is talking about.

Hope it helps,

- Chris