Wisconsin Public Television
Transcript: “In Wisconsin,” Episode #923 Soft Lure
Original Airdate: April 28, 2011
2INW0923

- They say a muskie is a fish of a thousand casts because that's how many it'll take to catch one. And in some cases, there may be just as many lost lures. This week, we feature a Wisconsin man who designed these lures and his invention is revolutionizing the fishing industry. It's environmentally safe and has just been voted one of the year's top 10 inventions by Popular Science magazine and is featured in the June issue. IronClads Lake Resources of Wisconsin also earned the 2008 best in show award at the Chicagoland Outdoor Show. In Wisconsin reporter Jo Garrett shows you how the inventor is angling for success and how his discovery got started in Dane County. 

- Well, I grew up here, just about a block from here up on the hill.

- Ben Hobbins grew up fishing in Madison's Lake Mendota.

- I used to come down here right after the paper route at about 5:30 and fish for an hour or two before swim practice in the summer.

- He loves to fish and he's passing on that love of fishing to his daughters.

- Remember how? Yeah? Okay.

- Hobbins has also cast a business into motion that may prove a boon to Wisconsin's waters. If all goes according to plan, it could help solve a huge environmental problem, revolutionize an industry, and reel in mega dollars and jobs. Stop right there. You're looking at it. This is called a soft lure or soft bait. They've been around for about 50 years and they work. Some soft lures look like minnows. Some resemble worms.

- They love these. You get that life look, a real-life look, and the fish, they just can't resist them. I've used them my whole life. They're good.

- Hobbins has been in business in marketing and high-tech, both here and abroad, but now from his current home in Waunakee he has become a backyard inventor. So, we went to his backyard to hear how in the process of solving a fishing problem he had, he solved another problem we all have.

- The winter ice-fishing season was coming up, and I was kind of daydreaming slightly about that, and then I was thinking about how cold my hands would be when I would be putting on these little soft bait tippers, we call them.

- This is a tipper. And this was Hobbins' problem.

- So, you typically hook on like this on the end of the hook and the fish will come in and you can go ahead and pull on that if you'd like and you'll see how just easy they'll just come right off. It's gone. So, you'll go through hundreds of these while you're fishing.

- Misery was the mother of invention.

- I mean, literally it feels like your hands freeze off just because they get ripped off every other strike pretty much or every other fish. And, so I thought, well, how can I solve this? And I thought for a few minutes, and the light went off, and I thought, I think I've got the idea.

- Through his knowledge of high-tech manufacturing, Hobbins came up with a way to strengthen soft lures, so this tougher lure stays on the hook.

- So, I'm fisherman. You're--

- I'm like a fish and the hook is biting. Ouch. There.

- Oh, man.

- Yeah. See, these--

- Yeah. 
(both snickering)
 
Okay. It holds. I got you. Okay, here's the part where all the non-fishing people are thinking new soft lure. Big deal. Well, it is. That's because this new technology has a potential payoff for all of us because of where all those many old soft lures ended up.

- You know, boom. 
(breaking sound effect)

- So, you lost it.

- Lost. And that's going to the bottom of the lake or floating around and that's it. Here's another big-- This is another swim. So, you get the same thing. Boom. And that doesn't take much pressure. A tube, you know, very popular bait, boom. Okay, now, this is how fast, that's how fast these lures actually are lost. In the environment, these are all in our lakes and streams. So, it's significant. When you see how easy you lose these and then you realize five decades of that and five decades of 25 million pounds or so of plastic each year, you realize there's billions and billions of pounds that are sitting in there. And it's not-- It's not breaking down.

- So, how is our freeze line looking there? 
§ §

- Plastic. This manufactured material was a critical part, of course, to Hobbins' quest.

- 6.3 grams.

- As was this place, the Polymer Engineering Center at the UW-Madison. Hobbins came here and met with the center's co-director Tim Osswald. Osswald saw the problem from the perspective of a plastics professional with concerns about plastics and the environment.

- When the lures fall off, and they will end up in the bottom of the lake or a river. They will not biodegrade. It will take thousands of years before this breaks down, if at all.

- Thousands?

- Thousands of years. Because it's a polymer. There's nothing in the bottom of the lake that even will cause it to biodegrade because the ultraviolet rays, that some could biodegrade the polymer, won't reach that deep down.

- Plastics last and plastics can leach.

- The plasticizer that is inside will start leaching out. And now you have, for a pound of these lures, you could have up to a half a pound of plasticizer that is going to seep into the lake.

- And these plasticizers that make the lures wiggly include chemicals called phthalates, and they are, according to Osswald, a cause for concern.

- Some of these phthalates, they can be quite dangerous to children. They have phthalates in them, which they could emulate estrogen, which can hinder the sexual growth of little boys, for example. And so, there are a lot of ugly things. And, they're also a carcinogen.

- Osswald sees Hobbin's plastic product as a solution to a plastic's problem and a potential boon to the industry. He's a vigorous proponent of this material which is so much a part of our modern life.

- Finally get a different person to do it, maybe Steve?

- The polymer lab often works with businesses in the state to try out new ideas and test new methods of manufacturing.

- There are companies in the state that when they try something out, they come and try it out on our machines. But it is a great resource for the companies in the state.

- And in this case, Osswald's students created these molds for Hobbins.

- They don't look very high-tech, and they aren't, but they certainly-- It's very clever how they're made.

- The molds are sealed with a new epoxy. The result? An immense cut in the time needed to come up with a prototype.

- Otherwise, it would take months if not a year to actually come up with prototypes. We shortened the time to maybe-- I think by 30 days or so, we had parts.

- Score another one for the polymer lab.

- He could use any of these molds, even on his kitchen table. He could actually cast one of those lures and make it.

- Which he did. Hobbins used the models created by the polymer lab to make his soft lure prototypes, which he then brought to the fishing industry's annual show in Las Vegas in July of 2007. His soft lure scored second place in new product development, a huge boost for a new product with a big market and the potential for a great pay-out in businesses and jobs.

- The soft bait market has been estimated by the WisGroup, a Wisconsin company that does new product assessments, at $250 million market.

- Hobbins is thrilled about the potential, for himself, for the lakes, for the state.

- I've been an avid outdoorsman my whole life, and to be able to contribute on the conservation side, it makes me feel good. You know, not for me, but for the environment and for fishermen. It just helps everybody.

- Ben Hobbins has also started an international fundraising effort called the Lake Delton Fisheries Restoration Project. The lake and all of its fish literally washed away last June during heavy rains. For more information, you can go to our website wpt.org/InWisconsin