Innovation: Who Made That Fishing Lure?

Jens Mortensen for The New York Times

In the early 1960s, word spread of a fishing lure with seemingly mystical powers. In the lake country of Finland, an artisan named Lauri Rapala had handcrafted artificial minnows out of balsa wood that zipped around with realistic movements. Life magazine described the product as "a lure fish can't pass up." Desperate to obtain the lures, anglers in America hunted for a way to buy them, usually with no luck. Imports were few, and bait shops often required a $20 deposit (about $160 in today's dollars) to rent a Rapala lure for the day.

Inspired by the craze, George Perrin decided to create his own version out of plastic. Perrin, who owned Pradco, a company in Arkansas that manufactured crisper drawers for refrigerators, soon discovered that it took a lot of research and development to make plastic behave like a fish. To test prototypes, Perrin stood on the diving board of a friend's swimming pool and cast his rod, adding or subtracting metal balls — called "rattles" — inside the minnow so that it would float just under the surface of the water. And when the angler twitched the line, the lure would dart around in a flash of silver.

People searching for the Finnish lure soon discovered Perrin's invention, called the Rebel Minnow. In 1963, the year after Perrin started production, his company, Rebel Lures, a subsidiary of Pradco, sold half a million of them. (Rapala, meanwhile, built a factory to meet demand, and its lure became widely available in the United States by the late 1960s.) Lawrence Taylor, a Rebel Lures spokesman, said an old-timer at the company joked that at the height of the minnow boom, "we made enough lures to outfit every man, woman and child in the country."

FISH LIFE

John Caprio, a biology professor at Louisiana State University, studies fish perception.

Many lures contain metal rattles. Does that sound actually attract fish? These products are often designed by humans who don't know enough about what fish hear. If you analyze the sound frequencies that these steel BBs give off, it's far too high for the fish to perceive. But of course, fish don't buy lures. Humans do.

Fish can sense electricity in a way that we can't, isn't that right? Yes. Ever watch on TV where they show sharks hitting a metal cage with a diver in it? Well, why is the shark doing that? To get the diver? Most likely not. That metal and seawater is creating an electrical current. If you ever look at the underside of the mouth of a shark — hopefully not too close — you'll see these tiny pores that are electroreceptors.

Are there any lures that use electricity to attract fish? There are some on the market that have little batteries in them. Unfortunately, they don't create the right kind of current.

So what is the best way to attract a fish? Sound. But the appropriate sounds. You don't want to warn the fish away. You need to know the frequency that will attract the particular fish that you're after.