Fishing during winter time, on frozen lakes (an activity known as ice-fishing) is a hobby for quite a lot of fishermen, who are not about to abandon their favorite activity even when the water surface is solid. For this reason, the manufacturers of various fishing accessories have come up with some solutions for this season as well, and that's exactly the type of device you'll read about as follows, namely the LMS-522C IceMachine Sonar/GPS Chartplotter presented by the people over at Lowrance Electronics.



The main point of attraction provided by the LMS-522C is the fact that we're dealing with a complete kit, which works right out of the box. Thus, the device sports an exclusive, water-repellent, softpack nylon bag with sure-grip handle, dual zippers, and rubberized non-stick base, which fits conveniently in a 5-gallon pail.



Furthermore, the device sports a built-in, molded tray with battery tie-downs, and is accompanied by a 12 volt, 7-amp rechargeable, sealed battery and battery charger. It also comes packed with a swing-out, ice hole transducer bracket, while the included boating package adds Skimmer transducer, gimbal mounting bracket and knobs, and 12V power cable.



Since this is, after all, a GPS combo, it was expected from the engineers at Lowrance to throw in some pretty advanced GPS / navigation related features. This is the reason why the LMS-522C IceMachine has been equipped with a 12-channel GPS module (WAAS-enabled), which helps users navigate by using the built-in maps (over 3,000 built-in Enhanced Lake Maps with depth contours). Furthermore, the device stores up to 1000 waypoints, up to 1000 event markers, as well as GPS alarms.



The sonar-related features are also quite impressive. The device from Lowrance works on a 200 kHz frequency and is equipped with bullet-style and Skimmer transducers. It attains a maximum power of around 2400 W and can go as deep as 900 feet (275 meters), which is way beyond what most users actually need.



Another very interesting fact worth mentioning is the fact that the device has been equipped with a 16-bit color full VGA SolarMax TFT LCD display (5 inches), which offers a display resolution of up to 480 x 480 pixels. Additionally, the device has been equipped with a cold cathode backlighting system, which allows users to view the contents of the screen, as well as the keypad even in the dark.



The LMS-522C IceMachine Sonar/GPS Chartplotter can be found at several retailers for around 700 – 760 US dollars, which makes it a very good solution for just about all the “ice-anglers” out there.