nitro71

One option for less than lethal protection is pepper spray. Or for carrying with your concealed weapon for times when you could use a non-lethal response. Anyways a good company to buy pepper spray from is Defense Devices. Only reason I'm listing a company is that it is super hard to find reputable places to buy this stuff and good luck on the Boston Leather. I did a lot of research and you can't go wrong with Fox Labs or Sabre. I've got the 2oz Cop Top Fox and a Boston Leather clip holster. It's a little large for every day use but could probable hose down a group of people. I'll probably get a smaller size pretty soon soon as I don't conceal carry right now but still want some defense. I'd like to get a easy to conceal pistol(small) but my budget doesn't allow for it right now. After packing my pepper spray I know I won't stick with concealed carry unless the pistol is pretty small. I also carry my Spyderco Tenacious in my back pocket as a back up to the pepper spray. Nice solid piece of razor sharp steel.

Thanks for all the replies! I've decided against any special on the water maps at this time. Any I can find for my local lakes are very basic to the point of it's almost as good to just have a printed map with the basic topographic info on it. (ie:free). I'll be looking for just a basic GPS map that has the lake on it to mark my fishing spots. Do the Garmin basemaps show small lakes or are there major roads and cities only?

I'm in eastern WA so will be fishing lakes for the most part. bobandrobin, I take it that you are talking about the Outback GPS? I found a Eagle 350C fishfinder on CL for $80 a while back. Spent hours messing with the X67C sim from Lowrance(almost the same fishfinder). Sounds like you don't have a need for lake topo maps? I'm on the fence about them myself.

Thanks for the replies so far! I'm not to worried about floating, just the basic waterproofing is good enough for me. I'll have to check out that discontinued hot spots software, might be interesting. Not really needing the features of a csx model(price) and driving features? Is google earth/maps the best option for what I'm wanting to do, inexpensively? After downloading the waypoints from fishing I'd like to put them on the map with notes. Later be able to take them and upload them to the gps with the notes so I could choose to goto that spot on the lake if I wanted to. Also would like to see a breadcrumb trail of where I fished on the map for fun. Sounds like it doesn't matter what software the GPS comes with as long as it has a data cable? I do admit the inland fishing maps would be nice. Do they come with external sofware for mapping the lakes. Putting points on them? Mapping your path you took? Or are they just topo maps of the lakes on the GPS?

I've done a lot of GPS research but am still confused on maps and waypoint(marking spots) management. Primarily I'm looking for a handheld unit to use for marking fishing spots while on the lake. Would like to mark a spot while fishing, input some notes. Later offload those notes from the GPS onto a map of some kind. This is where it gets really foggy for me. I don't know anything about mapping software. Would something free like google earth be able to do this? Do I need special software to come with the GPS? I also will use it for occasional hikes so reception under tree cover is important also. Would like a basemap so I can sorta see where I'm at. I'm not limiting myself to Garmin but they seem to be the most popular. From what I've been able to figure out a GPS V, any of the Etrex H, any of the GPSMAP models would work just fine as far as the GPS wants. But how about the software and computer connectivity for mapping lakes and fishing spots? Do you have to have the antenna open on a GPS V? Last but not least I'm on a low budget so a basic setup that works well is what I'm looking for.