Hi Rick00001967,  I believe you are referring to the paddleplanner.com website. It is an excellent site for planning your trip.  I'm jealous as I am stuck on the other side of the boarder for seemingly the foreseeable future and have planned a BWCA trip this year instead.

In the Inukshuk part of the forum I have posted a tutorial on how to use free QGIS software to make and print your own maps using the data from the Paddleplanner website(Legacy PCD).  It's a bit more work to setup, but in my opinion the results are superior to just using Paddleplanner.  Here is the tutorial if interested:
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Have a great trip!

It does still work.  I haven't tried the latest QGIS version, as far as printing, but you can definitely load the satellite imagery and overlay it with the PCD info from Paddle Planner.

I don't plan on printing maps for my upcoming BWCA trip in June, as I have upgraded my fish finder to one with a chart plotter function, a Lowrance Hook 4 model.  I used QGIS and a few other free software programs to create a zoomable satellite imagery map with the PCD layer from PP overlaid on top. When I put the crosshairs over the campsite it shows the condensed campsite info.  Likewise, the portages show the length in rods. There is a layer detailing the US/CAN border and the Quetico perimeter as well.

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A couple more screen shots taken with the fish finder itself. You can really pick out some shallow structure areas and even downed trees to target for fishing.   

LLC - Tiger Bay:
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The pros of this are I don't have to spend money on paper and ink and the data is imbedded.  The cons are my maps only last as long as my battery and of course the weight of the battery.  I am using a Ryobi 9Ah Lithium battery to power the fish finder and I tested it at just shy of 30 hours runtime at full brightness.

If there is interest, I could put together a tutorial for how I generated this map for my Lowrance unit.

You stated 30 hours of operation on a 9Ah battery.  Can the fish detector or the GPS functions be shut off when you are not using them to save battery? 30 hours on 9Ah is about 300mA.  That is better than others have reported. Good info.

arnesr wrote on May 29^th, 2021 at 4:17pm:

You guys are talking way over my head but as far as battery life goes, I know load matters.

Assuming a Ryobi 9Ah Lithium battery is rechargeable, I have a test request. Lose the bucket and let the ducer ping the open air for the test.

I ask this because with my no-frills finder running off 8 disposable AAs, I can get easily get two trips out of the batteries. If I forget to turn it off at night, which I've done more than once, I consider myself lucky to hear a tick tick tick the next morning.

Maybe another test for the backlight level would be interesting with the ducer turned off.

db, which fish finder unit do you use?  You mentioned, no frills, so I'm guessing it might be a black and white unit.  Those do draw a lot less power, maybe 1/4 what my Hook 4 uses. This unit replaces a Lowrance Elite 4x, which consumed about half as much power.  The x in the unit name for Lowrance units means it has no chart plotter mapping/GPS function.  Color and GPS and screen size all contribute to power draw. 

The Ryobi lithium battery is certainly rechargeable and that is part of the beauty of using it. It has protection built in, so you cannot over discharge and ruin the battery.  I have a number of tools that use 18V Ryobi batteries.  These bigger ones don't get much use though, I use them mainly in my weed wacker and a brushless chainsaw.  To be honest, if I didn't already have these batteries I probably would use a LIFePO4 battery as they are less expensive. 

I have one of these 16Ah LIFePO4 batteries which I've used though about a half dozen charges so far and it has preformed well.  It's hard to beat for the price, but it is physically larger with almost twice the Ah.   It's an option if you need some of the added frills of a power hungry fish finder and don't mind the weight. (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

I was using a 12.8V 10Ah LIFePO4 battery for the last 8 years, but last winter I noticed it wasn't charging fully.  I took it apart and found one cell of 3 batteries were leaking.  That forced me to start looking at other options.

The Lowrance Hook 4 unit is no longer in production, having been replaced by the Hook2 and then Hook Reveal model.  The Hook 4 is superior in that it has the ability to display Raster as well as Vector map images. Lowrance turned off Raster image mapping in their lower tier units, namely the Hook2 and Hook Reveal models. I had been using a Garmin GPSMap 62s in addition to my Elite 4x unit, but it always seemed like a disjointed system for fishing.  The Garmin is definitely they way to go if you are bushwhacking or using seldom used portages, as it's a hiking GPS.  Yeah, I could mark waypoints on the Garmin, but it wasn't on a detailed map.  The Hook 4  unit allows me to view Navionics (Vector) maps if the lakes have been mapped(a few in Quetico), or as I have shown it can display Raster satellite imagery.

I have heard that it is not good for the transducer to run it out of water, so I try not to do so intentionally.  I'm not sure if it causes overheating of the element or if it just needs a denser medium to flex against to reduce wear.  I know some people epoxy or silicone their transducers in their boat, so perhaps it's not a cooling issue.  I don't think running the transducer in or out of water would affect power consumption, it is pinging either way.  Sound travels faster underwater, so perhaps it pings or listens harder out of water, I'm not sure.