I was using my handheld GPS last
week at hunting camp and started thinking about how far we
have come with the ability to use electronics. Then
the first trip to the lake with a "depth finder"
filtered thru and man that was a long time ago.
I was living in a Funeral Home
in Dallas, N.C., (yes that is right), to help pay my way to
college. I was 20 or 21, going to Gaston College in
Gastonia, N.C. getting my Civil Engineering Tech. Degree and
living there to help pay my way. I would work
every other day and every other weekend. Gastonia is
near Charlotte N.C.
One day I was walking down the
hall in the "Tech Building" and one of my friends
came by and said, "the student body president is
looking for you". I thought well that's not so
odd, he lives in Dallas and maybe he needs for me to help
him with something.
Well I finally caught up with
him, Gary was his name, and he said I understand you are
"into this bass fishing stuff". I said that
I was and any fishing for that matter. Gary was one of
those guys going to school on the G.I. Bill after he got
back from Viet Nam, married and a few years older than I
was. I remember being very flattered that he would ask
me to go with him. He asked me if I had ever seen one
of the one of the new Lowrance Depth Finders. I told
him I had read about them but had no experience. We
decided that on Saturday we would make the trip to Lake
Norman, near Charlotte, N.C.
Well Saturday finally arrived
and I met him at 4:30 am and we took off for Lake Norman.
He had a red Jeep CJ5 and a boat that was really his Dad's.
It was an aluminum vee hull probably 15' or 16' with about a
40 hp, motorguide trolling motor or maybe some other, but it
had one. We made the trip and I remember that
everytime we would get to a good size hill the Jeep would
slow somewhat, he told me that the Jeep only had a 4 cyl.
engine a that was the problem. Hey that didn't matter
to me, we were going fishing with a dadgum brand new gadget
that I wanted to see, and all that Jeep had to do was get me
there.
We got to the lake and put the
boat in the water and Gary said, "you ready to use this
thing?", I said yes and he got out the box and opened
it. It was a Lowrance Fish Lo-K-Tor. Do you know
what that is? Go look on eBay and you can find one.
It is a green box that you open and the top turns into a
flasher screen. The power is a 6v lantern type battery
and the transducer had a suction cup to put on the transom.
We put everything together and went looking for that load of
fish we were going to catch.
Folks, how good are you with a
flasher? Well I was never really any good with it,
I could tell the depth, and read about all those fish I
could see as "blips" on the screen, but flasher
reading doesn't come in one lesson. We worked with
that thing for about 3 hrs. Gary would say "what
does it say now", I would say "it still says there
are fish everywhere". Finally I said, "I
think I have the depth part right but I am not so sure about
the fish part". He asked me what I thought we
should do. I said " well lets look at it so we
know the depth, but go over by those docks and lets catch
some fish", he said "good idea".
We did that and knew the depth
for every step of the way but caught some good fish from the
Lake Norman docks. The Jeep got us back and I had my
first experience with a flasher.
I still keep a flasher for
one reason, it can't beat for spoon fish just off the
bottom. I remember at Lake Kerr in 1999 or '98 I was
catching spoon fish in a B.A.S.S. tournament that were just
a slight "blip" just above the bottom. I
still have all of the modern stuff, but that first trip
with a Lowrance Fish Lo-K-Tor will not be forgotten.