Today’s historical photo dates back to the early days of promoting the Lowrance Lo-K-Tor, and features Carl Lowrance. Carl was part of a large fishing group that included Eufaula’s Tom Mann and guide Cecil Posse assisting with the fishing/guiding.
Homer Circle was another participant, and it was noted that he would be publishing his first column in Sports Afield as their new angling editor – that would be June 1968. When discussing trying to find the fish at Eufaula, Homer stated, “You folla’ Tom Mann around Eufaula for a day and you’ll see lots of the kind of bass you dream about.”
Concerning the Lowrance unit mentioned, Tom Mann said, “I couldn’t fish without it.”
According to the article, “Lowrance’s wife Velma kept needling Carl, who is not even an engineer, until he developed the Lo-K-Tor.”
“We’d go out to fish on the weekends where I’d caught crappie only the day before we’d have the bobbers set at the exact same height. Sometimes we’d sit for hours waiting for a strike. They’ll bite, you’ll see,” Lowrance kept telling his impatient family.
“But how do you know they’re here?” his wife kept asking. When electronics became transistorized, Lowrance began searching for the answer to where the fish are and answered the question successfully.
An interesting sidenote to this is Tom Mann along with Steve Fulton, Yank Dean and Blake Honeycutt would begin development of Humminbird shortly after this in order to rectify the inherent problems with the Lowrance units. Between the four of them they solved the issues or high-speed depth readings, motor interference, and dim bulbs.
