Advantage, Angler : Latest Products Do Everything but Automatically Find, Catch and Clean the Fish for You While You Wait on Shore
If the fish had known what was happening on the showroom floor of the Anaheim Convention Center last week, they would have been shaking their tails, dashing for cover. But it probably wouldn’t have done them much good.
Judging from the new product lines for 1992--and some of the current ones--on display at the American Fishing Tackle Manufacturer’s Assn.’s annual convention, one can’t help but wonder if fishermen aren’t being given an unfair edge on our finny friends.
“No matter what we want, the fish do what they want,” said Tob Bedell, president of Outdoor Technologies Group, which owns the Berkley and Fenwick tackle companies. “So I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where the technology rules the fish. I think the fish will rule the technology.”
Perhaps.
But fishing tackle has definitely gone high-tech. Research is done in the laboratory as well as the field. Electronic fish-finders are capable of more than ever, offering three-dimensional views of the world below. Baits and lures are becoming ever-so effective.
“The market is tough,” said Marc Jensen, general manager of Blue Fox, a division of Normark Corp. “You have to be sharp, and you got to be innovative, and you got to have new products, and it’s got to work.”
Thus, the AFTMA’s annual trade show:
--In a far corner room of the convention center, a personal utility vehicle, with 1,000 pounds of barbells placed over the rear axle for good measure, slowly backs over a pair of fishing rods to demonstrate which company’s can better withstand the pressure. One is crushed, the other unmarked.
The demonstrator is satisfied, tossing a competitor’s rod into a bucket with a few dozen others. --Atop a large aquarium filled with largemouth bass, a professional fisherman douses a plastic worm with a formula designed to attract the fish. He then sprays a small bead of the stuff above the worm, and flips both into the water.
Worm, and bead , inhaled. The stuff works.
“Reach for the Future,” was the theme thought up by AFTMA. Fly fishermen, after all, might want to know that there’s an electric reel that requires no hand cranking. And the conservation-minded sportsman should be on the lookout for retractable hooks that make for safer release of the fish. The clumsy should check out those unbreakable rods.
And if you haven’t been fishing in a few years, there are a few things you may want to make a note of.
For instance, you no longer go to the tackle store and ask for a spool of line, a few hooks and a bobber, unless you want to get funny stares.
“You want cold-water line, we’ve got that,” says Mike Fine, a spokesman for Berkley. “If you want fresh or saltwater, we’ve got that.”
There is actually line designed for specific species of fish.
Line attachments? There is the J.M. Roberts Company’s Fiber Optic Bite-Lite, which attaches to the line near the lure. With its replacable alkaline power cell, it pulsates in bright colors, providing “a unique approach to attracting the fish to your lure or your bait.”
Want to strip your line for a quick change? Berkley’s line stripper can take 120 yards off your spool in 10 seconds.
Hooks? There are hundreds of brands, from the laser-sharpened to the chemically sharpened, and thousands of shapes and sizes. Those that aren’t sharp enough can be made so quickly by battery-powered hook sharpeners.
The selection of lures--on the shelves and forthcoming--boggles the mind. In dazzling colors and shapely designs, they all look good. And chances are, they all work to some extent.
Most of the top companies test their products extensively, then hire professional fishermen to prove--and swear by--their success. Gone are the days when a tackle manufacturer can sell a product on looks alone.
They wiggle, wobble and worm through the water at any level desired. Today’s lures can be cast right into the weeds, where the fish have always enjoyed their most protective cover. No hookup, no sweat. Your lure can be retrieved without a snag.
The Blue Fox Weed Sneek took three years to develop, “from the initial idea to making sure it’s functionally correct and a salable product that you can merchandise,” according to Jensen.
The hook is protected by a brush guard, the knot eye by a plastic cover that fits over the knot, which “helps make the lure more slippery, and smooth and more sneaky.”
“It doubles in duty from brush to rocks,” Jensen says. “It has an upturned nose. In our testing, we found it made an incredible difference, up to 30-40% of the (weeds) it can collect. We found just by the tipping, and the specially built hook, and bringing everything upturned a little bit in the nose, and having the hook eye in a vertical instead of a horizontal mode, makes it even more (effective).”
The new Foxphorescent skirt that attaches to a lead-head spinner bait, soaks light and holds a glow for three to five minutes, perfect for “stained and murky water conditions,” according to Jensen.
Katsora Company claims that after five years of research and development, its Viper lure is “Sooo good, it’s almost like cheatin!’ ”
Berkley, which took trout fishermen by storm a few years back with the amazingly effective Power Bait, now offers Power Eggs, Power Nuggets, Power Grubs, Power Worms, Power Shad--Power everything . And all are proven catchers of freshwater fish.
The company, which has plants and offices in Mexico, Taiwan and Canada, has its own laboratory at its home base in Spirit Lake, Iowa, where scientists test new products.
“Right now we’re studying chemo-reception, or the science of scent, smell and taste of fish,” Fine said.
“We’re going to be exploring stimuli, vibration, sound, color, shape and whatever else you have in mind, that has largely gone unexplored. Kind of like walking into the jungle and going, ‘Hey, what’s in there?’ Now we’re going to be asking (fish) questions to see what they like with these other stimuli, or what turns them on.”
Berkley’s Keith Jones, a scientist whose function is to find the ingredients to “turn on” fish, said he has been successful thus far, adding: “They don’t draw any clear distinction between this bait and food. Their purpose for grabbing onto it is to eat it.”
Bedell said consumers can soon expect an artificial nightcrawler that will out-perform a real nightcrawler.
If you still prefer the real thing, Peter Lucas of Toronto is pushing a product he says will produce nightcrawlers or other worms by the dozens.
Worm-Up, in tablet form, is simply dropped into a bucket of water “just like an Alka-Seltzer.” The hose is left running, the water spills onto the grass or dirt, drawing worms to the surface in droves, according to Lucas.
“I don’t know how many worms you have in L.A., but find any area where they’re known to be and in two or three minutes, you’ll have them,” Lucas says. “You’ll harvest an honest-to-goodness 10 to 15 to 20 dozen worms--in the middle of the day.”
So take one, stick it on your laser-sharpened hook tied to your specialized line spooled on your multi-speed automatic reel attached to your unbreakable rod, and go have some good old-fashioned fun.
