Which trolling motor can I pair with my lowrance elite fs7?

I’m having difficulty figuring out if I can link a minn kota terrova to my lowrance fs7 elite. Online is says it can but in another forum someone said I wouldn’t be able To have a minn kota follow the marked waypoints on my lowrance. Is this true?

If that won’t work then will I have to go with the motorguide xi5 and get the NMEA starter kit to link with my lowrance instead to get the gps capabilities shared between the two devices? I can’t afford the lowrance ghost so that’s why I’m asking for advice.

My old Ranger had a MinnKota that worked nice but when I ordered my new 2015 Ranger, MinnKota was bought by Johnson Fishing, who owns Humminbird and stopped any link to Lowrance. I ordered the Motorguide i5 with the Lowrance interface and it worked great. Actually after 7 years my Motorguide was getting hard to deploy so my dealer talked me into a Ghost. To be honest, I liked the interface between my Lowrance and the Motorguide better than that of the Ghost. It worked great, I would create a route on the screen and the Motorguide would follow it. When trolling I would engage my kicker to 1.5mph then set the Motorguide on heading lock and 1.6mph and it would hold me on a perfect course. I sold the old Motorguide to a sailboat guy who wanted to mount it on his sail boat and navigate through the harbor channel accurately. I suggested he create a route, save it, then he can start from one end when leaving and reverse it on the way in. Both Lowrance and Motorguide are owned by Brunswick now.

Dave,

What kind of link between Minn Kota and Lowrance did you have on your older Ranger? I’m just curious.
I wasn’t aware that that it was ever possible to link them.

Karry Kyllo wrote:

I wasn’t aware that that it was ever possible to link them.

You can link them based on the model of the Lowrance unit and the model of the bow mount minn kota.

You may not be able to get the full “interface options” via this route, but they are compatible in many ways with a specific connection cord.

Here are the compatibility links via minn kota’s website.

https://minnkota.johnsonoutdoors.com/us/support/compatibility

Karry Kyllo wrote:

Dave,

What kind of link between Minn Kota and Lowrance did you have on your older Ranger? I’m just curious.
I wasn’t aware that that it was ever possible to link them.

Karry, That was 9 years ago! My CRS is getting really bad, but honestly I believe it was networking the GPS together as I presume it was the anchor lock and GOTO functions, place a curser on a fish and go back to it. I quite honestly can not remember exactly however I wanted the same or better and was told that Minnkota stopped talking to Lowrance (I think that was a big mistake on Johnson Fishing’s part as I’d still be running Minnkota’s) The ability to interface with my Lowrance autopilot is very nice.

The only thing you can do between a Minnkota and a Lowrance now is display sonar with an adapter.

I run the same as Dave lowrance live 9s and motorguide xi5. Love it can drop Mark’s along a weed line and have it follow it.love dropping points close together and having it follow inside and outside corners without thought

I will say motorguide and lowrance is not a great partnership.

Ripjiggen wrote:

I will say motorguide and lowrance is not a great partnership.

Well, they were the only trolling motor that linked to Lowrance. Now they are owned by the same company. I was hoping for some new release by now, maybe a new motor but it doesn’t look promising.

David Anderson wrote:

I was hoping for some new release by now, maybe a new motor but it doesn’t look promising.

Lowrance introduced the Ghost specifically to be paired with their graphs.

gimruis wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>David Anderson wrote:</div>
I was hoping for some new release by now, maybe a new motor but it doesn’t look promising.

Lowrance introduced the Ghost specifically to be paired with their graphs.

yeah but they’re very short

Ripjiggen wrote:

I will say motorguide and lowrance is not a great partnership.

Zero complaints with mine. Love it way better than a minnkota that I’ve used.

My question is can you use down imaging on your lowrance whenever it’s paired with the xi3 motorguide or do you only get the 2d sonar feature. I’m thinking about just going the humminbird/minn kota route so I can get all of the features out of the fish finder if I can’t get down imaging with the lowrance and MG.

You will not have down imaging with the transducer that is in the trolling motor with either choice you make. You would have to mount a down imaging transducer to the trolling motor and connect that to the GPS.

Alright now I have a better idea of everything. I was wondering whenever I do get the lowrance and MG all hooked up with nmea and pinpoint gps kits how will I switch between viewing what the sonar sees with transducer on the bow from the trolling motor and then whenever the trolling motor isn’t in the water being able to view the 3 in 1 transducer that’s on the back of the boat. Hopefully that makes sense

Are you only having 1 unit in the boat?

Austin Tanner Lee wrote:

Alright now I have a better idea of everything. I was wondering whenever I do get the lowrance and MG all hooked up with nmea and pinpoint gps kits how will I switch between viewing what the sonar sees with transducer on the bow from the trolling motor and then whenever the trolling motor isn’t in the water being able to view the 3 in 1 transducer that’s on the back of the boat. Hopefully that makes sense

That’s pretty easy as there is a menu option for picking which transducer you want to look at. Did it all the time, used the MG transducer when anchor locked then changed it back to my main transducer when running.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Ripjiggen wrote:</div>
I will say motorguide and lowrance is not a great partnership.

Zero complaints with mine. Love it way better than a minnkota that I’ve used.

My motorguide xi5 GPS is awesome. Not a single complaint. And I have it networked to my hds 12