Carl Lowrance loved to fish around his hometown of Joplin, Missouri. His sons, Darrel and Arlen, learned through scuba diving that fish school up in predicted areas.
The sons and father decided that fishermen needed to find these schools of fish, and in 1957 they built a transistorized sonar fishfinder, known as “the little green box.”For 25 years, the Lowrances sold over a million of these boxes.
Fifty-six years later, Lowrance sells a complete line-up of GPS and sonar fishfinders in a variety of designs and prices. Navico, who owns Lowrance, along with Simrad Yachting and B&G, leads the world in marine electronics manufacturing.
At the top of the Lowrance product line is the wide format fishfinder that features a big 12-inch, or 30.5-centimeter, high-definition color touchscreen. This piece of fishing electronics has the same feel as modern touchscreen wireless phones. You can easily move from your iPhone to this device without missing a beat. Tapping icons, or pressing and holding an icon while moving it resembles actions employed on your smart phone. Operating this fishfinder is a breeze.
You can customize personalized screen views on the Lowrance fishfinder. With a display resolution of 1280 x 800, the touchscreen of this electronic device can be divided into four split-screen presentations. There are just five push-button options down the side of this display, which means instead of fingering a fishfinder, you’re actually operating the boat and fishing.
Lowrance calls its screen a fancy name, but whatever name you put on it, this fishfinder shows up in bright sunlight and from extreme angles, making it a great choice to be seen from many areas in a crowded boat. Peripheries can be added to the Lowrance fishfinder with two Ethernet ports, two full-size SD card slots and a video camera input port. With other Lowrance products, such as marine VHF radios, broadband radar, entertainment or engine function sensing devices, you can take your marine experience well beyond just looking for fish.
Modern sonar technology built into these Lowrance fishfinders means you find fish easier.
Four channels of sonar activity in this Lowrance fishfinder hands you high-definition images from multiple angles and locations for a panoramic high-definition display. Again, Lowrance gives this sonar imaging their own name, along with the technologythat allows you to look at past sonar images and zoom closer to see views you might have missed the first time.
If there’s an electronic chart that you like, this fishfinder can overlay your real-time sonar information on top of that map to let you know your 3D relationship to other underwater structures in the lake, bay or body of water, a feature unique to this Lowrance fishfinder.
You can even network images from this high-tech fishfinder with those captured by other fisherfolkto create your own personalized high-definition bottom contour fishing maps.
Truly an international product, the Lowrance fishfinder is available in 36 languages. If you’re a worldwide marine traveler, realize that Lowrance installs electronic “Geo Fencing” on their fishfinders. This allows it to display appropriate language and measurements.But it also displays a flashing message across the bottom of the screen reading “not valid for this area,” if your vessel ventures into a geographic area where your unit wasn’t intended to operate. In other words, a North American unit won’t operate correctly off the coast of Peru, and a fishfinder made for Australia will show the flashing message when it’s off the coast of Africa.
The Lowrance fishfinder features state-of-the-art sonar technology and wireless connectivity. It certainly far exceeds the workings of the original 1957 little green box.