Fishing has come a long way since Andy took Opie out to their favorite Mayberry fishing spot. It now involves boats with 25 rods placed along the edges of the craft, and so many electronics that the boat cockpit sometimes resembles an airplane cockpit.

The primary gadget on these boats is usually a GPS, that serves as a navigational tool, weather reporting station as well as fish-finder. One of the newest examples of these is the Garmin GPSMap 530 Marine GPS Receiver. To begin with, it’s a Garmin, the most respected GPS manufacturer in the industry.

The GPSMap 530 features a 5″ high-resolution color display, and weather through XM WX Satellite Weather; this provides access to highly-reliable NEXRAD radar. According to Garmin, the GPSMap 530 database also features such valuable information as boat ramps, marinas, campgrounds, depth contours, mile markers, hazards and area roads.

I was on a friend’s boat in the Chesapeake Bay recently and found out first-hand how valuable these GPS units can be. We used the GPS to find the deeper channels in the water, for better fishing, and to find out-of-the-way spots. They’re so useful that it’s hard to imagine going fishing without one.