The On The Water crew joined the rest of the fishing industry at International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades (ICAST) this past July in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is where all of the latest innovations in sportfishing tackle are revealed prior to their release to the general public. Here some of the items that we thought would be of great interest to the fi shing faithful in New England.
Bluewater Series – Tsunami
With the Swim Shad and Timber Lure series, Tsunami has been making some of the most popular and affordable inshore and surfcasting lures in the Northeast for some time. At this year’s ICAST, Tsunami rolled out a new line of tuna-tough topwaters with their Bluewater Series. The lures come with beefy hardware and hooks and are available in three holographic colors. Best of all? They’re each less than $15. www.biminibayoutfitters.com
Assault Diamond Jig – Ahi Usa
There aren’t many species in the Northeast that can’t be caught on a diamond jig. This simple lure is deadly on all fish-eating predators from black sea bass to bluefin tuna. Ahi USA took this classic lure and made it even better. The holographic finishes feature scale patterns that scatter light, attracting fish from a distance, and baitfish colors that seal the deal once the predators move in to investigate. The Assault Diamond Jig also uses heavy-duty hardware, including a solid ring to attach the hook to the lure.
www.ahiusa.com
LiveTarget Saltwater Series – Koppers
The LiveTarget lures first caught our eye at ICAST in 2009. Their incredibly lifelike freshwater lures looked as if they might come to life and start flopping around in the display case. In 2010, Koppers added to the LiveTarget freshwater line with a soft-plastic frog bait that is so realistic, I doubt a live frog could tell the difference, but we had to ask, “When are we going to see some saltwater baits?” The answer was 2011. The LiveTarget Saltwater Series includes lifelike imitations of blueback herring, peanut bunker and mullet in topwater, twitchbait and swimming variations.
www.livetargetlures.com
Dahlberg Diver Frog – River2Sea
The kicking legs of the Dahlberg Diver make it the most realistic frog bait out there. Unlike other frog baits, it’s designed to dive, causing its legs to extend and retract with each pulse of the rod tip. The collar that allows the bait to dive to 30 inches also keeps the bait weedless, making it the perfect choice for hot summer days on your favorite bass pond.
www.river2sea.com
Mirrored Pago RhinoLens – Flying Fisherman
The popular Pago Frame from Flying Fisherman is now available with a mirrored RhinoLens for an affordable price of $59.95-$69.95. The RhinoLens are shatterproof and provide excellent protection from flying hooks and debris while out on the water. The lenses also eliminate glare and protect the eyes from harmful UVA and UVB lenses.
www.flyingfisherman.com
ProDry Jacket and Bibs – Simms
The new ProDry Bibs and Jacket from Simms look to be up to the task for withstanding the wettest weather the Northeast has to offer. What sets this raingear apart from others is the stretch fabric in shoulders, elbows and knees for exceptional mobility and comfort, along with the premium quality that Simms has built its reputation on.
www.simmsfishing.com
Spinshot Hooks – VMC
Drop-shotting is an extremely effective way to fool pressured largemouth and smallmouth bass, but line twist has always been an issue with this technique because of the rigging. The new VMC Spinshot Hook features a steel “spinning system” through the eye of the hook. This allows it to spin freely, eliminating line twist, increasing lure action and improving hook-ups.
www.vmchooks.com
Saltwater Sand Eel – Savage Gear
With sand eel numbers booming, anglers here in the Northeast are constantly looking for new lures to imitate these slim baitfish. The Savage Gear Saltwater Sand Eel comes from across the pond in Europe. The realistic head and sand-eel-like swimming action should make this an excellent bait for stripers, cod, albies and bonito.
www.savage-gear.com
Glo Crazy
These custom-sized lure inserts allow you to make a number of lures glow in the dark. There are currently three lures available from Glo Crazy that have receptacles for the Glo Crazy glowsticks: a freshwater jighead, a saltwater jighead and a freshwater spoon. Also of interest, particularly to offshore fishermen, is the Glo Crazy Lethal Strike, a lightstick that can be threaded onto fishing line and pegged in place with a toothpick.
www.glo-crazy.com
Frabill Suit – Frabill
The latest jacket-and-bibs combo from Frabill compliments last year’s heavy-duty ICESUIT. The Frabill Suit is a bit lighter to allow for layering underneath so the angler can better match his apparel to the conditions, whether it’s a bitter cold or an unseasonably “warm” day out on the ice. The jacket and bibs are waterproof and windproof, and the bibs have a zipper that runs from the ankle to the hip to allow the angler to pull them over even the largest winter boots.
www.frabill.com
Split Snap – Spro
This truly innovative new piece of terminal tackle offers a variation on the different styles of snaps fishermen use to attach lure to line. The shape of the Spro Split Snap makes it nearly impossible for a fish to bend out the wire or for a lure to come off the clip on its own. The snaps come in a variety of sizes, from 10- to 125-pound test.
www.spro.com
Grand Slam Select – Hi-Seas
This new line from Hi-Seas promises to be extremely strong, manageable and castable. The line has already got some attention from professional bass anglers who have found it effective on both spinning and baitcasting outfits. It’s made from the highest-quality copolymer, making it abrasion resistant and perfect for targeting big largemouths in dense cover.
www.americanfishingwire.com
Kanzen Braid – Seaguar
This product took us a bit by surprise. Seaguar, which is well known for making some of the best fluorocarbon leader material on the market, has jumped into the braided line market with their new Kanzen Braid. Kanzen is constructed of ultrathin fibers woven together to make a thin, strong, abrasion-resistant line with reliable knot strength. s
www.seaguar.com
Edge Inshore Pro – Ardent Reels
The use of low-profile baitcasters in saltwater is mostly limited to southeast inshore anglers. But every year, more anglers in the Northeast are discovering the value of these reels for targeting fluke with bucktails. The Ardent Edge Inshore offers fluke anglers excellent line control, a smooth drag and a lightweight body to make jigging easy. The frame is corrosion resistant, making it tough enough for the salt. The Edge Inshore Pro is available in several speeds including a 7.2:1 gear ratio that picks up 28 inches with each turn of the handle.
www.ardentreels.com
Marquesa 2-speed – Fin-Nor
When the Marquesa Reels were introduced at the 2009 ICAST, they offered a high-speed, big-game-capable reel in a small, powerful package. They quickly became favorites of anglers fishing vertical jigs for bluefin and yellowfin tuna around midshore and offshore structures. This year, Fin-Nor developed the Marquesa 2-Speed, which has all the features that made the Marquesa popular with the added ability to switch into low gear to put the boots to a hard-fighting gamefish.
www.fin-nor.com
Raw II – Okuma
The new Okuma Raw II spinning reel looks like it will be a great inshore and surf spinning reel at a moderate price. The Raw II has undergone a corrosion-resistant coating process to help it hold up in harsh saltwater fishing situations, and the tough drag is sure to slow down even the strongest stripers and blues. We really liked the reel handle, which seems like it would be just perfect for casting and fishing a topwater popper for blitzing bass.
www.okuma.com
Rage Series – St. Croix
To fill a niche in the $150 price range, St. Croix designed the Rage Series of bass rods. These rods are incredibly lightweight, shedding ounces by using a hybrid micro-guide system and a two-piece reel seat. The grip has a foam base with a neoprene skin over it to create a comfortable yet tough grip that you won’t find on any other factory-built rods.
www.stcroixrods.com
Nanofil – Berkley
The new superline from Berkley isn’t quite a monofilament, but it’s not quite a braid either. Nanofil line is a blend of hundreds of molecularly linked Dyneema fibers shaped into a unified filament. This gives the line the strength, limpness, low-stretch and thin diameter of braided line with the smoothness of monofilament.
www.berkley-fishing.com
EXO Reels – Quantum
The big news from Quantum was the introduction of their EXO line of extremely lightweight reels. When designing these reels, the goal was to shave weight where possible without sacrificing strength. The reels feature aluminum in load-bearing areas and a lightweight composite in non-critical locations. This drops the reel’s weight by 50 percent, creating a baitcasting reel that weighs less than 6 ounces. And, as a video at the Quantum booth at ICAST showed, this lightweight reel can withstand being run over by a car! www.quantumfishing.com
Millionaire – M7HTMAGST
Daiwa
The latest surfcasting conventional reel from Daiwa, the Millionaire, incorporates technologically advanced magnetic-braking controls and promises to deliver supre-long casting distance right out of the box. When you need to reach breaking fish beyond the casts of everyone else on the beach, or deliver a bait rig to the far side of a sandbar, the Daiwa Millionaire can make it happen.
www.daiwa.com
Sustain FG – Shimano
The Sustain line of reels got a facelift this year and gained a few new interesting features. One is the rapidfire drag knob that allows anglers to adjust the drag with far less turning of the drag knob. There is also a lightweight rotor made with a stronger carbon fiber that is tough and incredibly lightweight. This also makes the reel silky smooth. The last feature worth noting is the kickstand added to the reel to protect the bail and reel handle from damage while travelling in the truck or on the bass boat.
www.shimano.com
Pro4x – G. Loomis
The new Pro4x fly rod from G. Loomis takes some of the features of their highest-end line, the NRX, and packs them into a more affordable package for beginner and intermediate fly-casters that can’t commit to the price tag on the top shelf rods just yet. The Pro4x has a new taper the sheds weight on the top half of the rod while allowing it to recover quickly and cast with incredible precision. This rod is an excellent choice for budding fly-casters.
www.gloomis.com
The Snip – Boomerang Tool Company
Having line clippers handy can really make life easy. Too often, nail clippers get lost or go overboard, or just rust and break. The Snip from the Boomerang Tool Company provides a reliable line-cutting tool that attaches to your boat, your tackle bag or your clothes. The Snip easily cuts monofilament and braided line, and even includes a small LED light near the clippers for low light conditions.
www.boomerangtool.com
Kayak Transducer Scupper Mount – Lowrance
For kayak fishermen, the most exciting product at this year’s ICAST was the new transducer scupper mount from Lowrance. This mount is easily affixed through any of the scupper holes in a sit-on-top kayak and takes only minutes to install. This eliminates the need to drill a hole in your kayak or epoxy a transducer into place.
www.lowrance.com
LX7 Flasher – Marcum
The new LX7 Flasher from Marcum blends the Sonar DNA from Marcum LX Flashers and digital fish-finding technologies. Some of the unique features of the unit include 3-D bottom coverage, infinite zoom capabilities, and Target Adjust which magnifies fish and lure signals without increasing gain. www.marcum.com
Humminbird Down Imaging/2D Sonar Models – Humminbird
Though the incredibly detailed 3D imaging offered by Humminbird Down Imagining technology has been popular and useful in allowing fishermen to observe structure beneath their boat in detail, it will never fully replace traditional 2D Sonar, which provides sharp images of fish and baitfish beneath the boat. The new Humminbird models that will include both traditional sonar and Down Imaging are 1158c DI, 958c DI, 858c DI, 385ci DI, 345c DI.
www.humminbird.com
Shark Tooth Megalodon
Shark Tooth Megalodon is a line management tool designed to fit over bulk spools of line or leader material to keep the line free of tangles and also make spooling up or selecting a leader easier. The elastic band fits over the spool and a plastic hinge has holes through which the line can be spooled without creating a tangled mess. A small blade in the tool makes it easy to snip a leader right from the spool.
www.flyfishingxtreme.com
First Mate MS – FLIR Systems
FLIR added to their First Mate line of handheld marine thermal night vision cameras. The First Mate MS weighs only 12 ounces, has a long-life rechargeable battery and comes in a rugged, all-weather design. This camera can help boaters “see” on even the darkest nights and will come in handy when navigating through mooring fields or watching for boulders while getting fishing at night.
www.flir.com
Simrad NSS Sport Series – Simrad
Anyone who owns an iPhone or an iPad can appreciate the convenience and ease of use of the touchscreen. When it comes to fishing electronics units, the Simrad NSS touchscreen eliminates all the scrolling and button-pushing making it even easier to plot a course, mark a waypoint and investigate a new area. The NSS comes in three models, the 6.4-inch NSS7, the 8-inch NSS8 and the 12-inch NSS12.
www.simrad.com