Of Shrimps and Pheromones.

There are many colour requests that come across my desk that “must” be made into this or that shape.

“I’m telling you mate, this will be the hottest thing yet” is something I hear a lot.

However, the realities of a complex engineering and production sytem mean that not all colour mixes can easily be produced. We continue to play with colour combos and rest assured, when that next hot thing does come along, Purefishing will be the first kid on the block with it.

While new colours are high on the must have list of most plastics anglers, we should not forget the old tried and true.

Camo is a consistent seller and producer of great fish. The 6″ sandworm in camo is still one of our biggest selling baits.

Now, the 2″ Gulp shrimp is available in this classic colour. Plenty of stock in the warehouse, just get your retailer to order it in.

Now for something to think about.

There are several products on the market extolling the virtues of the pheromone additives within the bait that “excite feeding activity” in fish like no other can do.

RUBBISH!

Pheromones are not feeding stimulants. Pheromones cannot stimulate feeding activity in fish or any other animal!

Pheromones are chemical messages animals use to communicate within their species. For aquatic animals, one member of the species [the sender] passively releases into the water a substance [usually a complex chemical mixture] that triggers a specific response from one or more members of the same species [ the receivers]

Receiver responses can either be a delayed, long term change in the receivers physiological state or an immediate behavioral response. Given their high chemical sensitivity, fish not surprisingly rely on pheromone communication in several areas of their biology, including sex and reproduction, migration, conspecific recognition, offspring recognition, social status and predator avoidance. Each function requires a different pheromone [sex pheromones for example don’t act as anti predator pheromones] and generally only closely related species share similar pheromones even for the same purpose. For example, whereas a sex pheromone for carp might work on goldfish, it would not work on trout or bass or yellowbelly or cod or even any other distantly related species. Very few pheromones [mostly goldfish] have ever been chemically identified.

So, what does Gulp and for that matter Powerbait have that is so good and does excite a feeding response in fish?

Gulp is a water based protein that allows highly concentrated scent to leech into the water very rapidly. The scent is rapidly diffused through the water column and picked up by the fishes olfactory receptors – similarly with Powerbait, a powerful scent is contained within the bait.

The difference is these baits are made from plastisol, an oil based product. Given that oil and water do not mix, the scent release is slower than water based baits, but more efficient than non scented plastisol based baits.

If said fish is/are actively hunting, your chances are good you will connect. But, like all animals, fish are not constantly looking for food and the use of scented baits is no 100% guarantee you will catch fish. You just have a higher chance of catching fish using Gulp or Powerbait.

That concludes today science lesson.

Next lesson is what is Bio-degradability??

cheers, Dinger.