The Back Story on Humminbird
Like many iconic American companies, fishing electronics manufacturer Humminbird has humble beginnings. Hatched in a modest Eufaula, Alabama, garage-like facility in 1971, Tom Mann and a handful of investors known as Allied Sports Company began modifying Heath Kits into the first Humminbird Depth Sounders.
Former Humminbird CEO Jim Balkcom recalls: “Around 1970 there was a Eufaula Hospital radiologist making changes to the electrical design of Heath Kit Depth Sounders to shield interference from the bigger outboards making their way onto bass boats. Tom Mann was impressed and they started placing foil over the Heath Kit logo and selling the modified units to a buddy here, a buddy there. Before they knew it, they were creating serious demand.”
Read the Full Story in The History of Humminbird Fish Finders.
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COO and Publisher, Jason Sealock came to Wired2fish shortly after inception in January of 2010. Prior to that he was the Editor-in-Chief of FLW Outdoors Magazines. He worked up from Associate Editor to Photo Editor and finally Editor in Chief of three magazines FLW Bass, FLW Walleye and FLW Saltwater. Now he sets the content direction for Wired2fish while also working directly with programmers, consultants and industry partners.
Sealock has been an avid angler for the better part of 40 years and has been writing and shooting fishing and outdoors content for more than 25 years. He is an expert with fishing electronics and technologies and an accomplished angler, photographer, writer and editor. He has taught a lot of people to find fish with their electronics and has been instrumental in teaching these technologies to the masses. He's also the industry authority on new fishing tackle and has personally reviewed more than 10,000 products in his tenure.
He has a 30-year background in information technologies and was a certified engineer for a time in Microsoft, Novell, Cisco, and HP.
He mostly fishes for bass and panfish around the house. He has, however, caught fish in 42 of the 50 states in the US as well as Costa Rica, Mexico, and Canada and hopes to soon add Finland, Japan, Africa and Australia to his list.