Today’s historical photo is a trip back in time to the beginning of the sonar revolution. Given all the hype, opinions and grumblings about the recent popularity, and dominance, of forward-facing sonar, it seemed appropriate to jump back in time and see what they were saying about the appearance of the flasher on the angling scene.
There was a nicely detailed article out of Texas in 1962, just a handful of years after Carl Lowrance released the first Lowrance flasher to the angling public. It covers the basics about how sonar works, what led to the development of the unit, and the potential it has to help anglers have more successful fishing trips. It was the last couple paragraphs of the article that grabbed most of my attention. They read:
“The unit might be called a fisherman’s bird dog. But just as a bird dog finds the quail, and the hunter must hit or miss when the birds rise, so does the Fish Lo-K-Tor find the fish – but it still is up to the fisherman to catch them.
“It may or may not make your stringer heavier, but it certainly will eliminate a lot of fishless water – and excuses.”
Sixty years later, and numerous advances in electronic technology that Carl and Arlen (pictured) probably could have never foreseen, yet those same two paragraphs aptly describe things now, just as they did back in 1962. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Brian How About A Picture Of The Needle Type Structure Meter Invented By Buck Perry. Terry O”Malley, Don Nichols, And Don Dickson Need To Be Honored For Their Hard Work
I heard Don Dickson state in an interview that Buck actually made the original green flasher that Carl marketed. He said that the flasher didn’t work well for spoonplugging because it was hard to see in the sunlight and not precise enough. Buck then made the needle meter which was more suited to his needs. Also, he wasn’t happy that Carl had named it the fish finder rather than depth meter, but that’s probably what made it sell…