CASTLE ROCK, CO– Fishermen, take note! That colorful fishing lure in the attractive
packaging on the store shelf has little or no appeal to a fish in the water,
especially as the lure goes deeper and deeper in the water.
Why
is this? Many fishermen – and women who
fish too – may not know that fish actually see in color and use this ability to
hunt for food. However, the deeper a
fishing lure sinks into water, the patterns and colors change with the result
that the lure loses iridescence, color and contrast, makes it less attractive
to the fish. As an example, the most
brilliant red turns to almost black at 45 feet under water.
Armed
with this information, Robert Senter of Castle Rock, CO, an avid fisherman, was
perplexed with his inability to catch as many fish as he expected or wanted. With his degree in chemistry, years of
experience in the medical supply field and knowledge of polymers, sought to
find out why.
Today,
with one patent in hand and several others pending, he is confident that he has
a line of products that show promise to change – and improve – fishing forever. Mr. Senter heads up a company, R2
Innovations, LLC, whose Actiglo® fishing lures, all engineered, manufactured
and assembled in the USA. What makes
them different and highly effective, is they utilize proprietary mixtures of polymers
with transparent colorants and light emitting diodes to maintain colorability
iridescence in any light condition and at any depth in the water without
obscuring the light source. Plus the new
lures can achieve the buoyancy at the specific water depths desired.
What
sets Actiglo lures apart from others is that they also use transparent
non-bleeding colorizers and reflective in the proprietary polymers that when
coupled to a light emitting diode (LED), it creates natural colors and iridescence to the fishing
lure. The result is a line of engineered
and manufactured lures, hard bodied jigs, swim baits and spinnerbaits that
mimic the natural color, color pattern and iridescence of live bait fish.
The
new Actiglo fishing lures successfully overcome not only the loss of sunlight
at any depth fished, but also bait color degradation in cloudy, murky or dirty
water and adverse weather conditions.
This means the color and appeal of fishing with these lures at dawn,
dusk or at night or even ice fishing remain constant while the visually
appealing aspects of other fishing lures are diminished or completely lost. Small batteries that activate illumination
system achieve the ability to maintain the color and other features attractive to
fish, no matter what the depth, or natural lighting conditions. Iridescence within the core of the lures can
be deactivated by reversing the position of the battery, allowing the lure to
be fished with or without its illumination capabilities.
Actiglo’s
founder and product inventor Senter claims to be the first in the marketplace
to not only acknowledge these opportunities and challenges, but to resolve them
with new lures that really work. He has
successfully put together a special team of materials experts, designers and
molders to turn his idea into actual products that would and could mimic the
natural appearance of live bait.
Materials
Distributor and Technical Advisors, Others Help Actiglo Find a Solution
According to Senter, the team included:
1. Materials distributor (soft
thermoplastic elastomers– TPEs) and elastomeric materials technical advisors
Alliance Polymers and Services (APS), in Romulus. APS and specifically partners Roger Huarng
and Stephane Morin are well-known for their and their firm’s ability to suggest
materials and find molding solutions for product challenges. The materials criteria for the new Actiglo
lures included:
·
A
better material than polycarbonate that has a tendency to yellow
·
Specific
gravities to enable the lures to be produced to either float or sink to
specific depths
·
Refractory
indexes to ensure the colors or patterns would remain bright and appealing to
the fish
·
A
soft touch feel, but with a Shore A hardness that would make the lures soft and
flexible and a tensile strength of 700 – 7000 psi tens to make the lures
literally bite resistant
·
Optical
characteristics that would mimic the color, color pattern and iridescence of popular
water baits
·
No
plastisols or other harmful ingredients
·
Good
colorability and moldability
2. Engineering was assigned to
WayeGo Design LLC headed by Wayne Gonnering, also a skilled and avid
angler. Mr. Gonnering is responsible for
current and future lure designs, CAD drawings in IGS, STEP and Al file formats
and coordinates manufacturing tolerances for component parts and injection
molds.
3. Molding was awarded to ISO rated
High Performance Engineering, Colorado Springs, CO, under the direction of
Hyrum Anderson. Mr. Anderson is the
chief mechanical engineer and Director at HPE high grade metal aloe injection
lure molds and polymer component parts.
The team and their respective companies each and all have a penchant for having the products be as “green” and environmentally friendly as possible. No Actiglo lure has any lead in it, a metal that is hazardous and used by most fishermen to “sink” their lures. The line of Actiglo products use different polymers in different products to enable and allow each lure to sink to pre-specified levels owing to their specific gravity (45 – 2,000 feet). By way of example, an Actiglo lure package marked 25’ will sink to that depth and stay there.According to Actiglo’s Bob Senter, “It is every fisherman’s goal to catch larger fish, and of course for the lures they use not only to work, but be durable. Our products were far from an overnight invention and took many years of trial and error, from materials selection to design to molding of the final products. It was because of the team effort that we, and our products, literally ‘saw the light.’ We expect the Actiglo line to soon be in leading fishing supply stores soon and thus on its way to change fishing, forever.”
Information on the Actiglo lures can be obtained by contacting: R2 Innovations, LLC, 343 Morningstar Way, Castle Rock, CO 80108. Tel: 303-808-1705. Email: rls@mho.com. Web: www.actiglolures.com.
Information on the soft elastomeric materials used in Actiglo lures can be obtained by contacting: Marketing Department, Alliance Polymers and Services LLC (APS), 30735 Cypress Road, Suite 400, Romulus, MI 48174. Tel: 734-710-6700. Fax: 734-710-6715. Email: sales@apstpe.com. Web: www.apstpe.com.
Information on the design firm may be obtained by contacting: WayneGo Design LLC, P.O. Box 70, Evergreen, CO 80437. Tel: 720-542-8324. Email: waynego_design@comcast.net.
Molding information may be obtained by contacting: High Performance Engineering, 650 Elkton Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80907. Tel: 719-473-9989. Web: www.hpeweb.com.
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