NEW GULP- GETS GULPED BY FISH!

Anglers are always looking for the magic lure or the hot new bait. Every once in awhile some new product comes along that actually works as well as it's advertised. For years tackle companies around the world have been working on scent products to fool both fishermen and fish. Berkley was one of the first companies to make real inroads, hiring some top scientists, including a Canadian, to isolate the natural chemical compounds that tell fish that the bait they are about to bite is "food" and actually stimulate them to feed. To take that challenge a step further, the scientists then had to take that information and produce a scent product that would make more fish want to bite. Berkley's Power Bait products, introduced in the early 80's have been a tremendous success story. Now after nearly twenty years, this same company has developed a much more powerful scent formula that is flying off the shelves at tackle stores across North America. Before I wrote this story on the product I wanted to have the opportunity to test it extensively to see if was a good as other anglers were making it out to be.

On my last trip for walleye this past week, Gulp outproduced live bait and was much more durable. In fact in once situation we could actually see the fish chasing the bait out of the deeper water in order to bite. Once you open a package you will see how it is different from other artificials with a strong smell and very soft texture. Berkley says its Gulp products are made up of totally natural ingredients thus making it 100 per cent biodegradable, a very good thing in this day and age. The manufacturing process involved in making this new scent product allows the bait to release an intense scent trail, over 400 times more scent than plastic bait, says a spokesman for Berkley. This means that fish will be able to smell it from further distances, much further away than even live bait.

While fishing for walleye my partner put on the new four inch minnow worm Gulp in the brown colour and proceeded to catch a number of walleye in the 25 to 26 inch range. I had on the two inch minnow grub and was catching smaller fish, though almost as many. In this particular case a large profile combined with scent and feel, drove those bigger walleye crazy. By the end of the three days on our trip, we had gone through a number of packages, though not nearly as many as if we had been using live bait. Berkley makes the Gulp in nine different shapes right now but for walleye we found the four inch minnow worm, the minnow grub in the two and three inch to work well along with the nightcrawler. They also come in a few different colours but on the last day fishing for walleye the fluorescent orange minnow grub was real hot.