Innovator or or Imitator

ukey28 · Post by **ukey28** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 3:11 am

I had a pretty good discussion with a guy the other day about being an innovator or an imitator. We talked about techniques and where they came from. Innovators are the folks that take an idea or technique and use it in a situation that at first glance one would think it would never work or they try tweaking something that does work to make it much better. Now I don't think changing the color of a bait is being innovative, but rigging it the opposite of the norm and using it in a different situation is. Some innovators are famous, some are the guy in your club that no one can beat. Imitators are the rest of the group, chasing that forward thinking guy, trying to keep up. Can anybody offer up something where they were an innovator?

brendanc · Post by **brendanc** » Tue Nov 13, 2012 9:13 pm

Maybe if you broaden the question to include who people may know that are innovators... anyone?

George Cawthorn · Post by **George Cawthorn** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:14 am

OK, I'll dive in here. Good question.

I used to experiment with innovative concoctions making my own fishing scents for lures. One of the best I came up with was a blend of crushed garlic, salt, a smidge of oregano and a little balsamic vinegar.

I would take some of my senkos, roboworms, and ikas poke a whole bunch of tiny holes in them with a pin and marinate them in plastic bag filled with my concoction.

I caught a lot of big bass using it that way and dang if some of them didn't speak Italian too.

George Cawthorn · Post by **George Cawthorn** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 11:58 am

Yo! I gave you guys one of my to secrets. Are yall asleep or what?

brendanc · Post by **brendanc** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 3:05 pm

Can't speak for Frank, but I was out fishing this weekend... then I came home and had to clean out the boat, garage and straighten out my tackle.

Now let's focus on that concoction of yours... I was going to say that sounded pretty tasty! lol

One question though, if I'm out of Balsamic, can I substitute red wine vinegar? >/wink.gif" alt="wink" title="wink" height="15" width="15" /> And where's the Italian bread for dipping in that mix?

On a side note, many years ago back when my cousin Joe and I fished the Foxwoods Tournament Trail together. He liked to use spray on garlic scent all the time. THe kind that came in a spray can. One morning when we got to the ramp there was an overwhelming smell of garlic in the air. When we inspected the back storage compartment of my boat, we found that the can had exploded in the freezing air temps during the overnight. The entire compartment and all of Joe's tackle were drenched in garlic scent. To add insult to injury, everyone at the take off that morning had to point out the fact that the two Italian guy's boat reeked of garlic! It took months to get that garlic smell out of the boat.

George Cawthorn · Post by **George Cawthorn** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:24 am

Thanks for for coming back with a reply Brendan!

The one I tip I gave first was marinade and second garlic and salt are very common scents but oregano and vinegar are not mentioned.

I put this stuff on my stove and boiled it and then crushed it into a little vasoline to give it some stick.

It worked well but after all the that trouble of cooking it up I really couldn't tell if it worked any better than the Smelly Jelly that I buy.

OK, so now is here secret weapon innovation number 2 which Brendan should pay attention to since he likes to swim the Ietech lures.

Ive've had a lot of good strikes fishing them but the one thing lacking on them is eye spots. I got some of those rolly polly eyes at my local Play School store. You know thoses little plastic eyeballs that roll around, the kind kids glue onto sturff.

Well anyway, I bought some of those rolly polly eye balls and crazy glued them to the heads of the Ietech swimmers. Good results. Try it out.

brendanc · Post by **brendanc** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:58 pm

Eyes on fishing lures... who ever heard of such madness? lol So let me ask you Geo, how well do they stay on?

Sometimes, if I want the eyes, I will use a jig head that has the eyes already in the head, or glue eyes onto the jig head, never tried gluing right onto the soft plastic though. From a money standpoint, I can see how that could save some bucks over time.

Years ago, I was on Allen Lures' Prostaff and Peter Allen had something he called gator eyes. Simple a plastic rattle that was colored and you could just push them through the head of a soft plastic lure and suddenly you had eyes and added noise. That was also very innovative.

ukey28 · Post by **ukey28** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 7:48 pm

I think we can all say we know of an innovator in fishing. Just look at the lure rack and think. Plastic worms - Nick Creme, Finesse worms - Charlie Brewer, Fat square bills - Fred Young, Little George - Tom Mann.

Then there's theory; Patterns - Roland Martin, Structure - Buck Perry, and on and on.

I think that too many fisherman fail to try something in their head for fear of failure, but think about fishing and there's more failure in fishing than in probablly any other sport.

A good baseball player gets a hit once in three tries. I have never had an entire day of fishing that averaged out to a fish every third cast.

In golf, even a lousy golfer gets the ball in the hole in 10 strokes, not too many fishing trips are a fish every ten casts. In NY a good bass lake is a 1.5 bass caught per hour, Thats a bass every 40 minutes or every 45 casts for the average fisherman.

Basically innovate away it can't get any worse!

I play with new ideas all of the time, usually taking an idea and changing its use or the way its fished. I had these old Fleck jig heads that were horizontally flat. They looked like a shoe, wide but not tall. I clipped the nose off of the 1/4 ounce size and slipped it into a tube, it made the tube flatter and wide like it had small wings. By cutting off the nose it put the weight back toward the middle of the tube. When the tube sank it made these wide circles an the way down. maybe a 2-3 foot circle. It caused the tube to be a little noisier and in the fishes view longer, because it took longer to get to the bottom. Great for dormant fish and cold water fish.

My favorite carolina rig is a 4" centipede behing an 1/8 ounce sinker, a miniature set up of the reservoir favorite, but I can fish it in 10 inches of water, without spooking the area.

Just changing it up. I like the eyes on a bait and garlic on my linguini! Not so much on my rod handles!