Thursday, August 20, 2009
A bait that looks and smells like fish food? Now that's a good idea!
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
If you’ve ever thrown a handful of fish food into a pond or stream, or watched someone else do it at a trout hatchery, then you’ve seen the response. The water surface suddenly boils with the action of fish gulping in the food.
You can toss a baited worm or minnow into the farces and chances are it will be ignored as the fish continue to gobble up the manmade stuff.
That gave Dr. Steve Munsey an idea. “Why not make bait that looks and smells like fish food?”
Many of us probably have had that thought, maybe even tried attaching a piece of fish food to our hook.
The concept hasn’t been overlooked commercially, either. Orvis sells egg flies that look a good bit like a piece of fish food if you can find them in a dark color. Berkley makes something it calls Powerbait Trout Hatchery Formula along with Gulp baits in the form of nibbles, nuggets and dough that look a good bit like fish food.
But Munsey, a practicing veterinarian who lives in Tazewell county, thought he could do better. His training in animal science and nutrition came in handy, giving him a background in animal foods.
Even so, developing a bait with the characteristics of artificial fish food wasn’t easy. He experimented, tested and consulted with fish biologists, fish food companies and hatcheries.
“Three or four times I nearly gave up,” he said.
Munsey persevered with several objectives in mind:
- The bait had to smell more like fish food than fish food itself.
- It should be the same size, shape and color of a fish food pellet.
- It had to stay on the hook well, even when whipped with a fly rod or gobbled up by a fish.
- It had to be biodegradable, so as to be eco-friendly.
- It had to float, like most commercial fish foods do.
In February, Munsey brought his creation onto the market under the brand name Stuffy Steve’s. He is selling packages of 20 baits for $4.99, sometimes marketing them out of veterinary office.
“Three years and many ugly prototypes later, we finally have it,” he said.
One of Munsey’s biggest fans is Larry Crane, a retired Department of Game and Inland Fisheries biologist.
“Steve brought some of it over to our house this past summer to try it out,” said Crane. “I watched him catch 19 fish with the same piece of bait on a fly rod. He caught a bass first then caught loads of bluegills and even a hybrid striped bass.”
There was no question in Munsey’s mind that fish accustomed to being fed, in a hatchery or a pond, would readily take his new bait. But what about wild-grown fish that never had experienced fish food?
“We were pleasantly surprised to discover that fish who had never eaten fish food before also loved our lure,” he told the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.
The smell is the secret, he said. The latex-based baits are stuffed with fish food and fish oil.
I tried some of the Stubby Steve’s in my pond where the fish are feed on a regular basis. Some of my observations:
- The pellets are a little larger, rounder and flatter than the commercial fish foods I am accustomed to. I don’t deem that a problem, but it you are a perfectionists it would be easy to trim them a bit to match the hatch. They are the perfect color.
- They stay on a hook extremely well. You can catch fish after fish without having to change baits.
- In a comparison test, I found that nightcrawlers and minnows out-fished Stubby Steves in my pond, but they caught fish and it is well worth having a couple packages in your tackle box as another arrow in your quiver. Some who have tested this bait have reported it out-performs live bait.
Right now, your biggest challenge may be finding Stubby Steve’s because it can be tough to market a new, untried product. Your best bet is Munsey’s Web site: stubbysteve.com.
