Fooling Fish
7/27/2006 3:53:44 PM by Rob Newell
If it seems that fish are getting smarter as the years go by, you’re right. The answer to outsmarting them is to buy smarter fishing products.
Every year fish get a little smarter. Okay, so maybe the bullhead minnows in the neighborhood retention pond don’t look like aquatic geniuses, but sport fish, especially those relentlessly pursued by throngs of recreational and professional anglers, are becoming evermore wary of their pursuers.
While successful catch and release practices and the spectacular growth of tournament fishing have been blessings to the fishing industry overall, the flipside is that anglers are now dealing with fish that have been caught so many times they hold Ph.D.s in Lure Avoidance.
If you don’t believe that sport fish are becoming more conditioned to avoid lures, heed the sage words of well-known professional bass angler Jay Yelas of Tyler, Texas, who has been catching bass for a living for more than 20 years.
“There’s no doubt that fish are becoming more educated to our offerings,” says Yelas, who has claimed a Bassmaster Classic title, a Bassmaster Angler of the Year and an FLW Tour Angler of the Year during his stellar career.
“Twenty years ago we were fishing lakes where probably half of the bass population had never been caught and they responded well to traditional lures like spinnerbaits and crankbaits,” he continues. “Now, given the rise in popularity of bass fishing, when we go to highly pressured lakes like Old Hickory in Tennessee or Logan Martin in Alabama, I’m betting that 85 percent of the keeper-sized bass have been caught at least once. The result is a smarter bass that’s tougher to catch.”
And this phenomenon is not just happening in fresh water, either. Ray Van Horn, a well-known saltwater guide and redfish tournament angler from Tarpon Springs, Florida, has watched fishing pressure add a few IQ points to his quarry on the crystal clear flats of Southwest Florida as well. “Redfish in Florida are so pressured it’s unbelievable how wary they’ve become,” he says. “Just the glint from a rod or the shadow of a lure flying through the air makes them flee.”
Van Horn often jokes that the redfish in Florida are so smart they can count the number of people in your boat and even tell who they are.
But before you get discouraged by tales of fish that might qualify for the Mensa Club, rest assured that as an angler you have a major ally: Berkley in Spirit Lake, Iowa.
Berkley’s answer to smarter fish is to make smarter fishing products. Ever since Berkley introduced the first nylon-coated steel fishing leader in 1945, the company has been dedicated to blending innovation and technology to fool savvy fish of all species.
Few lure companies put more money and effort into research and development than Berkley. The company employs dozens of fulltime scientists whose sole mission is to gauge different fish’s reaction to scents, flavors, textures, vibrations and colors. Their elaborate fish research facility in Spirit Lake runs nonstop, exposing different species of fish to a host of different stimuli to better understand fish behavior. As a result, Berkley has produced some of the most advanced fishing lures available.
For instance, their Frenzy line of hard baits has been designed to duplicate the exact vibration and sound a baitfish makes when it’s fleeing for its life.
PowerBait is Berkley’s line of soft plastics that features life-like scent, texture and taste no matter what species of fish an angler is after. And Gulp! is Berkley’s latest creation: an all-natural product that reacts with water to disperse a powerful scent field in the water so quickly that fish in the area are immediately drawn to it.
Berkley is not just about lures, either. In fact, the company has long been a leader in the fishing line market where just as much R&D has gone into making sure that once your fish bites, it ends up in your possession.
Berkley’s mainstay monofilaments, Trilene Big Game, XT and XL, are trusted millions of times a year by a variety of anglers across the globe. But it doesn’t end with monofilament.
When the braided line and superline rage began in the 1990s, Berkley jumped to the forefront of braided line technology with Dyneema fibers and produced Fireline. Then when fluorocarbon’s unique invisible-to-fish properties were discovered by anglers, Berkley introduced Vanish Fluorocarbon.
Yet, just plain fluorocarbon wasn’t good enough for Berkley. Since fluorocarbon was transparent, especially in lighter pound tests, line watchers had a hard time seeing their line to better detect strikes.
Berkley’s answer to that problem was a special fluorocarbon called Transition that applied the same technology found in “transition” sunglasses in which photo chromatic lenses change colors when exposed to sunlight. In the same way, sunlight triggers the fluorocarbon above the waterline to turn a high-vis gold while any fluorocarbon beneath the water retains its invisible properties. The result is a line anglers can easily see above the water, but fish can’t see below the water.
“That’s just a small example of how dedicated they are to using technology to make better fishing products,” Yelas says. “Their passion for wanting to help the customer catch more fish is unparalleled.”
Yelas views Berkley’s innovation in fishing products as being similar to technological advancements in golf equipment. “Through technology and design, golf companies are now making clubs which improve your drive 50 yards, given the same swing and force on the ball,” he offers. “After 18 holes of golf, that advantage eventually adds up to a few missing strokes off the score card.
“Berkley’s advancements give anglers the same kind of improved efficiency on each cast. I truly believe that products like PowerBait, Gulp!, Frenzy, Fireline and Vanish give me little edges that add up to a few more bites per day over my competition. And a few more bites per day over a three- to four-day tournament add up to some serious dividends.
Van Horn agrees with Yelas’ assessment of Berkley’s delivered efficiency in their products. “Fireline and Gulp! have completely revitalized the saltwater flats fishing market,” Van Horn says. “For a while it looked like the fish had won. Redfish were wise to all of our tricks and they had literally learned how to stay exactly a cast away from our flats skiffs. You could see a pod of reds from the platform, but they were always just out of casting range — until Fireline came along. “Berkley produced a ten-pound test Fireline with a four-pound test diameter. The ultra-thin diameter allowed for an extra 15 to 20 feet of distance from each cast — just enough to get your bait out ahead of the school instead of just to the edge of it. In addition, saltwater Gulp! has been the cat’s meow of artificial baits for Van Horn. “Gulp! has been a godsend for saltwater fishing,” Van Horn says. “Nearly every saltwater sport fish eats it — reds, trout, tarpon, flounder, grouper, sea bass, sharks — you name it.”
Gulp’s all-natural composite allows it to disperse a powerful water-soluble scent into the water 400 times faster than scented plastics. “Scented plastic simply smolders scent into the water compared to Gulp! which reacts with water to fume scent into the water column like smoke from a five-alarm fire. To fish Gulp! properly, you cast it out and stick the rod in the rod holder — that’s it. You don’t have to work it, twitch it or reel it. Fish hunt it down by smell — the lure does all the work for you.
“Now, instead of wearing ourselves out chasing reds down with a push pole and fast-moving lures, we just stake down on a flat, make extra long casts with Fireline and wait for the reds to smell our Gulp!
For some anglers, Berkley’s lure and tackle advancements have completely changed the way they fish. Such is the case of professional angler David Walker of Sevierville, Tennessee.
Walker built his bass fishing career using casting gear to pitch and flip jigs
in shallow water. But that one-dimensional approach left him out of the check line more often than he’d like over the last couple years. “Jay is right, fishing has changed dramatically over the last several years, primarily because of fishing pressure,” Walker concurred. “In order to survive in the tournament fishing business today, you have to be able to fish small, natural-looking finesse type baits when the bite gets tough.”
For Walker, that has meant morphing his approach to include light line and spinning gear, something he has abhorred for years. “What I always hated about spinning gear and light line was their lack of feel,” he says. “Compared to casting gear, I always felt so far removed from what was happening on the other end of a spinning rod. And when I’d set the hook, there was so much stretch in the system, the fish would come off.”
Walker’s change to spinning rods in the freshwater world happened largely through his redfishing experience in the saltwater world. “My father-in-law lives in Punta Gorda, Florida,” he says. “The first couple of times I went redfishing with him, I noticed how effectively he tamed those big reds with a spinning outfit. When I used his spinning rods, I was floored by the extreme sensitivity and zero stretch on hooksets, even on long casts.” Walker soon discovered the secret to his father-in-law’s spinning tackle: Berkley Fireline and a Vanish Fluorocarbon leader. “The next week I went out and bought new spinning rods for the first time in my career,” Walker reveals. “I spooled them with 10 and 14-pound test Fireline, tied Vanish leaders to them and took them bass fishing and it’s changed my approach to tournament fishing for the better.”
Now finesse fishing staples like shakey heads, drop-shot rigs and weightless soft jerkbaits are a regular part of Walker’s professional bass fishing arsenal. He estimates the change has put an extra $30,000 to $40,000 in winnings in his bank account this season. “I would have never made the switch to spinning gear if it wasn’t for the sensitivity, strength, no-memory and no-stretch properties of that Fireline and Vanish leader system. It’s made spinning rods a pleasure to use, and needless to say, I now keep a close eye on tackle advancements that come out of Spirit Lake, Iowa.”
At Berkley’s headquarters, there’s always something new on the horizon. Yelas is currently excited about Berkley’s new Trilene Maxx monofilament which promises to blend the abrasion resistance of Trilene XT with the suppleness of Trilene XL.“Berkley is also coming out with a Gulp! jig trailer called a Wicked-wing trailer that is going to give your favorite bass jig the powerful scent properties of Gulp!,” Yelas adds. “It’s just another added edge to entice fish that are getting smarter every year."