Gone Fishing – LED Lights Up The Best Gear

Angler's LED Light Kit Model: FT75338CP See details Market price: $30.00 Our price: $24.00 (€ 18.23), save 20%

On first glance, LED lights and fishing just don’t seem to go together. There’s something incongruous about matching up the ultra-modern flash of LED lights with the serenity of a day of fly-casting or deep-sea fishing. A second look, and a third, tells a far different story. LED lights are appearing in the most well-equipped tackle boxes these days. From glow lures to waterproof torches, LED technology is being used to attract fish, light up the night and generally make your life as a fisherman easier.

If you’re packing up your gear to go fishing – whether your venue is a mountain stream, a quiet Midwestern lake or the deep sea – there are a few things you should make a point to pack along besides your rods and reels. Here’s a quick list of some very important – and a few very fun – gadgets that should make it into your tackle box.

In Case of Emergency

No one likes to think that bad things will happen, but sometimes they do. When the worst happens, you can minimize the damage by being prepared. What should you have in your tackle box (or on board your boat) to deal with emergencies?

• An all-in-one survival kit that includes matches in a waterproof tin, a cutting tool with a sawed edge, a folding knife, aerial flares, a metal whistle and a large plastic garbage bag/tarp. You’ll find some excellent compact survival kits that include all that you need to get you through the 72 hours that most matter if you’re lost or stranded somewhere.
• A functional knife with a sharp blade for filleting and cleaning fish, and one with a serrated blade for cutting bait. Get them both in a handy fishing knife kit from Coast that includes a filleting blade, a boning blade and a bait cutting blade, designed to interchange with a single handle.
• A working flashlight – for emergencies ranging from finding something in the darkest corner of a storage cubby to finding your way in unfamiliar terrain at night. The best of the current litter feature LED lights, which draw far less current so will stay bright up to ten times longer than most other types of flashlights. Some have been tested to run over 400 hours on 3 D-cell batteries.
• Emergency signal light or survival light. LED lights are small and compact, but can pack a powerful wallop of brightness if you need it. An LED survival light that flashes a signal beacon can help searchers locate you if you’re lost. You can pick up a Flash Fire LED survival light for less than $15, and pack it along on your keychain – a small price to pay if you find yourself with a stalled engine and night coming on.

Routine Lighting

Night fishing is a whole different animal than a lazy day on the riverbank. For one thing, you need to be able to see what you’re doing. You’ll really appreciate the convenience of a headlamp, which leaves both hands free for other things and eliminates the awkwardness of trying to position a standing light to focus illumination where you need it. Because of their light weight and the fact that they can run for days on the power of two triple AAA or a 9V battery, LED lights are the perfect choice for lightweight, bright and long-lasting headlamps.

An LED Lenser boat light is another handy choice for putting light right where you want it. It plugs right into your boat lighter, and has a flexible neck so you can twist and turn it to get the beam pointing just where you need it to be. You’ll get up to 100,000 hours of light from the LED bulb – that’s a lot of nights of fishing.

Obviously, if you’re fishing at night, you’ll need more than just your headlamp for illumination. Most of the experts recommend diffuse lighting off the gunwales of your boat if you’re using one, as well as camp lanterns and regular camp lighting to help you see your way.

Gadget and Gizmos

One truly handy light for night fishing is a UV black light, which makes it easy to see your line once you cast it out there. There are some great combo lights on the market that combine LED lights in UV black lights AND white lights for diffuse illumination.

Submersible fishing lights are another nifty little gadget. Green fishing lights attract bait fish to your area, and the bait fish attract the ones you really want to catch. Some of the niftiest of the fishing gadgets? Glow lures with submersible LED lights in green, blue or red. From everything I’ve heard, read and seen, you want to go green.

The absolute best little gadget light that I’ve seen anywhere, though, is the Fisherman’s 5-way Light Kit. It includes a hand held LED light with four colored refractor rods. Use the light without a rod, or pop on one of the colors to specialize the use: bright red for emergencies (slow flash, fast flash or steady as a beacon), blue for low light intensity and preserving your night vision, white for all purpose lighting and green for attracting fish. You’ll get up to 100,000 hours of light in one of the easiest to use forms ever.

The hands-down handiest tool ever to keep in that tackle box is a folding fishing tool and 12 piece bit set. It’s more than a combo knife – it’s an all-in-one toolbox that includes everything you need to improvise on the fly, including coarse and fine pliers, wire cutters, scissors, needle nose pliers, crimpers, a 12-piece bit set and a marlin spike. There’s not much that needs doing that you can’t do with this tool.

-Ben Anton, 2006
http://www.lightsandknives.com/led_lenser.htm