nick yurchenko

Rapala VMC Corporation together with its brands is the largest manufacturer of fishing tackle in the world. Unfortunately, some of the products offered by Rapala VMC Corporation (hereinafter Rapala) do not meet scientific data. The book “Explore Rapala Product” discovers some scientific problems connected with the Rapala’s products.

The Chapter 1 of the book is devoted to describe the properties of acoustic fishing lures manufactured by Rapala, Bill Lewis, Daiwa and other international companies. It is shown that noisy sounds emited by rattling and clacking wobblers are mismatched on their parameters with the hearing abilities of generalist fish (like perch, pikes, zanders) and squids. Furthermore, these sounds are fully masked by the heavy ambient noises in the typical water habitats. In the additional field tests, no statistic data have been obtained to confirm that Rapala wobblers, Blue Fox spinners and other lures with the mechanical acoustic devices are more effective than the visually similar but silent lures.

In the Chapter 2 of the book, pheromone based feeding attractants elaborated by the U.K. government agency named the Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) in the partnership with Kiotech International PLC for the purposes of the recreational fishing, commercial fishing and aquaculture are considered. In the area of recreational fishing, these attractants are promoted worldwide by Marukyu Co. (Japan), Rapala VMC Corporation and some other companies of the national level. It is shown in the field experiments with the collection of statistic data that Marukyu’s Ultrabite α, Rapala’s Trigger X, Blue Fox’s Dr. Juice Super Juice and other pheromone base attractants are not effective or species selective.

For comparison, it is shown how natural alarm pheromones and predator odors (kairomones) can be used in the practice (to attract pikes, to separate age groups of cyprinid fish).

The book is presented in the form of selected articles prepared at different times. For readers, this leads to some repetition but such redundancy is useful for memorizing the content of articles.