Question: From where did the idea of coffee come?
VanDam: Salt has been a component in soft-plastics for a long time, but coffee is a new kid on the block in fish attractants. Some of the lure designers at Strike King noticed that all the bait farms that raise worms for fishing used coffee grounds in the soil where they grow worms. Therefore, the live worms have a coffee scent or a coffee flavor. Our designers thought that if the real thing (live worms) smelled and tasted like coffee, and bass ate them up, how much better would our soft-plastic lures be if we had that same coffee flavor inside them? We also found that if you sprinkle coffee grounds in the water, little bluegills and minnows will eat those coffee grounds like crazy. Therefore, we learned that coffee is some type of natural attractant to fish.
I don’t know why bass like coffee, because there’s nothing natural that smells or tastes like coffee in the bass’s environment. Maybe the bass know they need caffeine to get going in the morning, like we do. I don’t know why it works, but I’ve seen bass be more aggressive when I’m fishing soft-plastic lures with coffee in them than when I fish the lures without coffee flavoring. I was doing a seminar and standing on top of a tank that had nothing but rainbow trout in it. I pitched a standard tube in the water with the trout, and the trout wouldn’t give it a look. That sort of hurt my feelings, because it was a KVD Tube – my signature lure.
When I took that tube off and put on the Coffee Tube, the trout attacked the bait. Obviously, the trout were coming to the scent of that Coffee Tube, because as you know, trout have a highly-developed sense of smell. So, I don’t really have to understand why the coffee flavoring in the Coffee Tube catches more fish than a tube without coffee. All I really need to know is that the coffee flavoring in the Coffee Tube catches more bass than the tube without the coffee flavoring. I use the Coffee Tube. It helps me catch more bass and do well in tournaments, and that’s the main thing I’m concerned about and you should be, too.
VanDam: Salt has been a component in soft-plastics for a long time, but coffee is a new kid on the block in fish attractants. Some of the lure designers at Strike King noticed that all the bait farms that raise worms for fishing used coffee grounds in the soil where they grow worms. Therefore, the live worms have a coffee scent or a coffee flavor. Our designers thought that if the real thing (live worms) smelled and tasted like coffee, and bass ate them up, how much better would our soft-plastic lures be if we had that same coffee flavor inside them? We also found that if you sprinkle coffee grounds in the water, little bluegills and minnows will eat those coffee grounds like crazy. Therefore, we learned that coffee is some type of natural attractant to fish.
I don’t know why bass like coffee, because there’s nothing natural that smells or tastes like coffee in the bass’s environment. Maybe the bass know they need caffeine to get going in the morning, like we do. I don’t know why it works, but I’ve seen bass be more aggressive when I’m fishing soft-plastic lures with coffee in them than when I fish the lures without coffee flavoring. I was doing a seminar and standing on top of a tank that had nothing but rainbow trout in it. I pitched a standard tube in the water with the trout, and the trout wouldn’t give it a look. That sort of hurt my feelings, because it was a KVD Tube – my signature lure.
When I took that tube off and put on the Coffee Tube, the trout attacked the bait. Obviously, the trout were coming to the scent of that Coffee Tube, because as you know, trout have a highly-developed sense of smell. So, I don’t really have to understand why the coffee flavoring in the Coffee Tube catches more fish than a tube without coffee. All I really need to know is that the coffee flavoring in the Coffee Tube catches more bass than the tube without the coffee flavoring. I use the Coffee Tube. It helps me catch more bass and do well in tournaments, and that’s the main thing I’m concerned about and you should be, too.