Tuning Into the HydroWave
Every morning I awake to the sound of my coffee machine brewing a fresh pot of joe. Like clockwork I roll out of bed, pour a fresh cup and off to the lake I go.
This daily habit got me
thinking. If I'm self-programmed to respond and react to the sound of fresh
coffee being brewed, will lethargic bass become active off the sounds of other
bass feeding?
This very question got
me looking into the effectiveness of the feeding emulator known as the
HydroWave. As a professional bass fisherman, I'm always looking for ways to up
my game and give me that needed edge over my competition. The HydroWave is an
electronic devise that omits prerecorded sounds of feeding bass underwater and
as their slogan reads, creates a feeding frenzy.
Despite powerhouse bass
anglers such as Kevin Van Dam, Jeff Kriet and Gene Eisenmann proudly sporting
them, I still found myself a bit skeptical on the whole idea. Even when Paul
Elias caught that mega sack every day of competition on a very tough fall bite
at Alabama's Lake Guntersville, I still wasn't quick to chalk that win up to
much more than a great presentation on a few great areas. It wasn't until
looking into the actual physical science behind HydroWave that I started to
believe in the product.
Tactile Sound
Transmission (TST) is the primary output of the HydroWave's speaker system and
uses finely tuned amplifiers to deliver the sound. Tactile sound is much
different than ordinary sounds because it delivers a noise that you can actually
feel. As described on HydroWave’s website, if you have earplugs in you will not
be able to hear a sub-woofer but you will be able to feel it. Fish hear on that
same frequency, the same frequency and sound produced by the HydroWave.
To continue to break it
down one step further, HydroWave incorporates both Lateral Reactive Technology
(LRT) as well as Vibration Reactive Technology (VRT) to elicit predatory
feeding responses.
LRT is a vibration wave
technology that operates at a frequency level that stimulates a predatory
response through a fish's lateral line. The lateral line
is naturally tuned to detect low frequency vibrations created by
small prey such as shad, herring, bluegills and crayfish. The LRT of the
HydroWave, produces these exact vibrations and creates a natural predatory
response.
VRT is a vibration wave
that operates at a frequency that stimulates a predatory response from the fish
through their inner ear. It's well known that a fish's ear is nothing like a
humans, a fish's ear consists of dense bones under the skin that detect and
translate vibrations. This vibration detection is so accurate that a bass is able
to differentiate between vibrations of various preys. This explains how a fish
can be so visually impaired but still be able to feed and know what it's
feeding on before it attacks it.
Alright, enough with the
science mumbo jumbo, let's take it to the water. After looking into the hype
that is the HydroWave, I decided to borrow a buddy’s unit for a Bassmaster Open
event on Lake Lewisville, in north Texas. I used much of my practice time
playing with the different settings and options trying to quickly familiarize
myself with the contraption. For those of you who don't know, the Lewisville
Open broke a record for the toughest tournament in B.A.S.S. history with only 3
anglers catching a limit in technically 4 days of competition. My first
realization of the potential of the HydroWave actually came as a surprise.
While struggling to find more than a bite or two in the first couple days of
practice I decided I better start probing a bit of deep water. I recall idling
out of a creek and as I was idling out through the mouth over the creek channel
I noticed my Lowrance unit "light up" with what looked like bass and
enormous schools of shad on the bottom in 20 feet. I quickly got on the deck of
my Ranger and started making casts with heavy spinnerbaits, a deep running
Biovex crankbait, and an Outkast football jig. After a solid 25 casts with not
a bite and zero activity around me, I remembered I had the HydroWave on my
deck. I turned it on and within a minute fish started blowing up all around me.
Unfortunately for me they were not largemouth they were stripers that had started
blowing up on shad. I had literally sat there for 15 minutes with not
a ripple on the water and less than a minute after turning on the HydroWave all
pandemonium broke out around me and in that moment my confidence quickly
started growing.
My next tournament was
just a couple weeks ago on legendary Table Rock Lake. In practice I had found a
couple fairly deep rock piles that were the size of my boat and sat on the ends
of some long tapered points in 35 feet of water which I located by slowly
scanning the points with my Lowrance StructureScan. On my very first cast I
caught a 4 pound smallmouth on a 3/4 oz. Outkast Touch Down Jig. The fish
instantly coughed up crayfish all over my boat so I saw no need to make another
cast, I knew what they were eating and where, so I saved a waypoint and left.
The first day of the
tournament, after spending all morning and early afternoon trying to make
something happen shallow, I made my way to my deep rocks and within about 2 to
3 hours I probably caught close to 30 and culled a dozen or so times and put
myself in strong contention going into the second day.
Day 2 of competition
opened with a day full of extremely high winds and fishing these rock piles
efficiently in the middle of the lake was close to impossible. The rocks were
so snag filled that I couldn't fish them without breaking off and since the
piles were so small, all I was doing was shutting down the school.
A sure thing was turning
into a nightmare and my nerves got the best of me so I blew out of there in
search of some shallow fish. This was not the best scenario considering I
wasted the first few hours and the best morning shallow bite trying to force
something to happen out deep. My worst fears became reality when afternoon
rolled around and I only had one small keeper in the box, with two hours left
before I had to weigh in. I decided I'd leave it all out there on those deep
fish. This time though I'd take a different approach, instead of sitting back
and trying to fight the wind I'd idle up to the rock pile and jump up on my
trolling motor and use my Lowrance HDS 10 Gen-2 to show me a single fish and
then try to catch that one fish and just try to put together a limit one bass
at a time. The only problem was that I wasn't seeing the bass any more; I knew
they had to be there but I couldn't see them. Desperate, I turned on my
HydroWave unit and I started seeing fish pop up on my graph and could sit on
top of them, flip my 3/4 oz. Outkast Touch Down Jig off the side of the boat
and use the wind to drift the bait right past the bass's face and within an
hour I filled my limit!
On my ride home to
Minnesota, I couldn't help but be disappointed that I didn't put two and two
together earlier in the day as I could have easily been right up there in the
standings. At the same time, I was so grateful that I did figure it out and was
able to prevent a horrible day on the water as well as gain valuable points in
the Angler of the Year standings. Even though those bass were on a crayfish
bite, the sounds from the HydroWave was just enough to pull them off the rocks
by about a foot so I could separate them from the bottom with my Lowrance unit
and make fishing those rocks way more efficient without snagging. Like my
coffee machine, the HydroWave was just enough to turn those fish from lethargic
and sitting on the rocks to active and ready to eat; regardless of what their
prey was.
Speaking of Minnesota,
anglers from the south regions of the country already understand the importance
of the HydroWave as they've been dealing with shad their entire angling lives.
Bass anglers from my neck of the woods are slow to connect the dots. For my
sake I probably shouldn't be going into this. Like I said before, at the level
I fish, I need every advantage a guy can get. Regardless, just because we don't
have shad as our main forage here in the upper MidWest, doesn't mean
HydroWave's technology isn't just as useful to us, in fact it's better. The
prerecorded sounds that the HydroWave omits are actually the sounds of bass
actively feeding and the crunching you hear are the shad's swim bladders
crunching. The same sounds that are made when bass start putting the smack down
on bluegills, it's nature ringing the dinner bell.
The reason I say that we
northerners have it better is for the simple reason that not too many savvy
bass fishermen have HydroWave’s equipped on their rigs yet in this part of the
country. It's totally new to our bass and like with anything else new, bass
aren't at all conditioned to it. It's like showing a bass that's never seen an
artificial lure in its entire life a spinnerbait for the first time. Game over.
Also, for those that are
still wanting more, the rumor is that the powers that be at HydroWave are in
the process of developing bluegill and crayfish sounds that will be available
as an update to the already existing units. Let me be the first to tell
you, if you think largemouth respond well, wait till you see how smallies
react.
There's still so much I
need to learn with my HydroWave but I'm eagerly learning one bass at a time.