Boater’s Guide To Catalina Island
The Private Boater’s Guide to Catalina Island, now available at www.SoCalFishingMaps.com, your local fishing tackle dealer, dive shop, or boating store, is the first in a series of seven Boater’s Guides to cover the entire coast of Southern California in extreme detail, from Point Conception to the Mexican Border.
The new Boater’s Guide features eight pages of laminated and spiral-bound maps packed with information about Catalina Island. With nine different Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s), over a dozen different mooring areas with 800+ total buoys, numerous anchorage areas, “no anchorage” areas, beach campsites, harbor patrol check-ins, seasonal fishing depth restrictions, feast and famine fishing…the need-to-know factor at Catalina is big. And now all the information you need is in one place.
The Boater’s Guides are created by native San Diegan and life-long fisherman, Chris Reed. “A lot of the map products on the market have been out for over 10 years,” says Reed, “and there’s a lot of new data out there to take advantage of. Our maps are made to be used on an open skiff, with little protection from ocean wind and spray. That means they have to be sturdy, stow-able and waterproof.”
It’s all about the details for Reed, an industry veteran in mapping and electronics who was frustrated with the products in today’s market: featureless NOAA charts, inadequate mid-tier electronics and popular phone apps that promise detail but deliver a generic worldwide basemap “with more contours.” Built by someone who actually uses their own product, the Boater’s Guide series moves beyond the basic fishing map to provide a comprehensive guide of Southern California waters.
Did you know that CDFW’s 60-fathom depth restriction on bottom fishing in Southern California is a physical boundary of GPS waypoints and not actually defined by how deep the water is?
Each Boater’s Guide overlays regulatory information onto popular fishing spots, so you can see at a glance which spots are closed or have special rules because of an MPA, or which spots might fall under seasonal depth restrictions. Instead of having to look up the numbers in some confusing table, the GPS numbers of all the popular fishing and dive spots are right there on the map.
You can also use the calibrated grid of the map to plot GPS coordinates of any reef areas or fishy-looking bottom features to take you right to your next hot fishing spot.
For more information visit our website at www.SoCalFishingMaps.com.
