The one that can't get away…
February 6, 2006
news24.com
Spokane - In the ancient struggle between man and fish, man has a new weapon.
Forget fancy lures, depth charges or precision casting guns. The new weapon requires vision - ultraviolet vision.
Called Fool-a-Fish, it comes in a bottle that sprays titanium dioxide on fishing lures and bait. The chemical lights up the watery depths like a disco ball, luring fish from half 800m away.
Fool-a-Fish is the brainchild of a Spokane physician named Dr Milan Jeckle who combined his love of chemistry and the outdoors into a new business. Fool-A-Fish is earning a growing reputation as anglers from Alaska to Florida enjoy success with the product.
"You catch three or four times more fish, and the biggest fish," Jeckle contended.
Researchers have discovered that while humans see in three colours - red, yellow-green and blue - fish and birds see a fourth colour in the ultraviolet range, which shows up as a white glow, Jeckle said. This colour is invisible to humans.
Product lauded in the fishing industry
Working with David Cleary, a chemistry professor at Spokane's Gonzaga University, Jeckle came up with the formula combining titanium dioxide, which is used in sunscreens, and several other chemicals. The whitish liquid dries quickly, and will stay on a lure for some two hours, he said. It is nontoxic, odourless and washes off with soap and water.
But underwater it shines like a beacon to fish.
Jeckle said many of the spray products currently used to lure fish are scent-based, because fish are known to search for food by smell.
Jeckle makes up batches of Fool-A-Fish in his kitchen. The spray is sold in some outdoor stores in the region, and it can be ordered on Jeckle's website. It is also getting written up in fishing magazines. Northwest Angler said the formula "makes it super easy for fish to see lures or baits from great distances".
Instructors at Salmon University in Tacoma, a guide service and fishing school, also report success with the product. John Keizer, one of its chief instructors, said he found that treated herring caught three fish for every one caught on untreated herring.
Similar product developed for birds
Jeckle has also adapted his formula to produce Fool-A-Bird, which works on a reverse principle. Birds use ultraviolet vision to avoid humans, so Jeckle created a formula that when sprayed on a hunter's clothes, body and gun will absorb ultraviolet rays.
"You spray it on yourself and they treat you like a tree trunk or a dead stump," Jeckle said. "They ignore you."
Jeckle grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he began fishing for perch as a boy. He practiced for three decades as a family physician in Spokane, and went into semi-retirement five years ago. That's what gave him the time to develop his products, he said.
Jeckle cautioned that Fool-A-Fish is not foolproof.
"It's not magic," Jeckle said. Some days nothing will make fish bite, and other days they will bite at anything, he said.
"This is for when it's in-between," he said.
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