High-Tech Accessories to Help Make Your Next Fishing Trip a Success
New technology for fishermen can be both a good and a bad thing.
Russian fisherman Semyon Konev made international news earlier this month when he caught a fish with a drone less than a minute after making his first attempt. After hearing about the technique online, Konev went to a local reservoir, attached a bait line to the powerful drone for fishing, spotted a school of fish and flew the drone over the water. Within 30 seconds, the float dipped into the water; Konev then flew the drone upwards to pull in his catch. While drone fishing remains controversial for the advantage it gives anglers, it serves to illustrate how high-tech fishing has become. Here are a few other high-tech fishing gadgets.
Smart Fishing Rods
With smart technology everywhere, a smart fishing rod was inevitable.Tackobox’s Poletap SmartRod uses integrated accelerometer bite detection technology to make it easier than ever to tell when you have a nibble on your hook. Equipped with a built-in computer and powered by two lithium batteries, the Poletap detects fish activity using sensors inside the fishing rod rather than relying on mechanical or clip-on detectors. The rod has three sensitivity levels in order to distinguish false alarms from bites. Once a genuine bite is detected, a built-in alarm system alerts the angler. One button operation makes reeling in your catch easy. The Poletap uses a premium rod blank, a 20-pound braided line and an aluminum spool with four ball bearings.
Smart Bait
Smart technology has also been applied to bait. Livingston, which had previously introduced Electronic Baitfish Sounds (EBS) to equip bait with the sound of natural baitfish, updated this technology at ICAST 2015 by unveiling Bluetooth-connected MultiTouch bait that enables fishermen to program a full range of multiple bait sounds into a single lure. With the MultiTouch, anglers can use their smartphone to download 30 different natural bait sounds and program them into their lure. The MultiTouch also lets you download information about the habits of the fish species you’re trying to catch. It even tracks your fishing activity to help you optimize your future fishing, recording information about the location, time of day, barometric pressure, water temperature, lure, lure color, depth and EBS settings of your fishing session.
Where the MultiTouch lets you recreate baitfish sounds, Smartbaits lets you adjust your bait’s color. Smartbaits change color automatically after you submerge them, transitioning to different colors as they float through different water temperature zones. The color changes attract fish, inviting them to strike. Smartbaits comes in hardbait and softbait varieties. Hardbaits change color on the lure’s belly, while softbaits can change their entire color or can assign different colors to the top and bottom of the lure.
Fish Finder Apps
Fish finders, one of the older high-tech fishing accessories, have also gotten an upgrade in the digital age. The iBobber combines a mobile fish finder with an app that works from smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S7. The fish finder uses sonar technology capable of detecting fish swimming at depths as deep as 135 feet below the surface. Identified fish are color-coded by size and tagged for depth. The app adds a fishing log which provides you with information about your favorite GPS-tagged fishing spots, weather conditions and water temperature, along with waterbed contour maps, guides to fish species and photos. The iBobber works with your existing mobile devices and is powered by Bluetooth Smart for long battery life.
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