I’ve not yet tried a BSX™ but the people behind it are first rate.  Accomplished people do not destroy reputations built on a lifetime of hard work by lying.  I believe their product is of high quality as compared to most products in recreational fishing.  Is the BSX™ worth the money?  Underwater sound fidelity is extremely hard to achieve, especially in a small compact package at a low price.  No one knows that more than we do.  A small scientific underwater speaker/transducer with the amplifier and power source would normally cost $1,200.00 and up, way up.  Commercial fishing versions are very expensive.  Based on that, we’d say that the BSX™ at $700 is quite fairly priced.

Which device catches more fish?  If you just hang the Magnabait™ over the side of the boat as you do with the BSX and compare sound attraction only, our numbers are very close to their published data.  I doubt there is a five percent difference either way when fishing for bass and other sunfishes.  I’m sure the quantity of their data is much greater than ours in this area.  I’m fairly certain that adding scent plus the pulsing light, both standard on the Magnabait™, gives our product a greater potential advantage especially in darker waters.

This is especially likely because the Magnabait™ can be positioned far from the boat or shoreline (See our Fishing Strategies section on the website).  It’s self-contained, buoyant energy source needs no heavy electric cable to power it.  This allows fish to position themselves normally. With the Magnabait™, this serves an additional role in distracting the fishes’ attention away from your boat or even your outline if you are fishing from shore.

We at Magnabait™ have substantial experience with trout and other salmonids as well as various saltwater in-shore and coral reef species.  The BSX™ marketing strongly implies that it was purposely built for bass and sunfish species.  Taking them at their word, it’s hard to imagine that the BSX™ could compete with the Magnabait™ in the trout and salmonid areas as well as with the pike species.

Did the people at Biosonix™ make a mistake?  NO.  There was a great deal of research that was already published for decades regarding specific sounds and frequencies that demonstrated an attraction for certain types of fish.  The basic underwater audio technology is similar in many ways to what we saw at Sea World or on the Flipper TV show of long ago.  They took a prudent, conservative approach.  If we’d begun by seeking bass, we’d have done the same.

Our product was developed for very high production because it's origional design was suited for use in hundred of thousands of caribean lobster traps.  The BSX™ does not seem to be.  When we began, no scientists had proven there was a lobster/crayfish language.  Even more remote was the fact that fish recognized the crayfishes’ calls and used them to hunt for them.  Who knew?  Even we didn’t.

Now we come down to the substantial philosophical differences between the Magnabait™ and the BSX™.  The BSX™ was clearly built for tournament bass fishermen.  It has rechargeable batteries and multiple sounds that are further adjustable.  I am told that you can even buy optional cards that are endorsed by your favorite celebrity bass fisherman or woman.  That’s great marketing, but dubious science.

The full-time tournament bass fisherman spends hundreds of hours per year on the water so a rechargeable unit makes sense.  A transducer also requires a lot of power so even a recreational fisherman would need frequent recharging of his BSX™.

The Magnabait™ was originally developed for commercial fishing.  It was designed to spend over a month unattended in the open ocean come what may.  It is extremely efficient with its self-contained power source.  When Hurricane Wilma hit our storage facility on Marathon Key, Florida, some units traveled the Gulf Stream as far north as Nova Scotia and still worked like new.

Our overall goal is to add even more features and reduce the price over time.  We’ve already begun research and patent work for future versions.

Quite frankly, recharging a true underwater unit often results in lots of leaks due to dirt and human error.  This would ruin your Magnabait™ as well as your following trip.  It’s also very expensive.  Above water technology such as the BSX™ can use the same inexpensive technology you see in every home from a digital camera to a portable stereo.  We are quite aware that most of our customers would not run out of the power in their Magnabait™ before our future units come to the market in 2009 or 2010.  Most of them would rather not spend too much of their hard-earned money on technology that will become obsolete.  They’d prefer to spend as little as possible to try the Magnabait™ concept, then once they are satisfied, they can use the money they would have spent on recharging the old unit to purchase a new more advanced model.

By the time you read this, we’ll probably have a discount program in place so that if you are a user of multiple Magnabait units, you’ll qualify for a substantial discount.

The BSX™ has six sounds plus more you can buy.  Apparently they are almost infinitely adjustable.  Let’s say you have seven sounds with only ten adjustments each. That alone is 70 possibilities.  If you discard half and spend ten minutes each testing the remaining 35, that’s 350 minutes.  That’s almost six hours to dial in the optimal signal set.  That doesn’t even include the fact that the weather plus several other factors will change over that six hours.  This may have a toy-like fascination for a person with a lot of spare fishing time.

Coming from a commercial fishing background, this is stupefying to me.  A fishing captain would throw me off the boat for even suggesting that it would be his responsibility to tune in my product. 

He’d say, “You find the signal that works best 95% of the time.  Don’t expect me to spend my time doing your work.”

The truth is that fishing captains are usually far more blunt that that, but you get the picture.

Inside the Magnabait™  are batteries, a computer, and a speaker.  That’s everything we’d need to add a variety of additional sounds at no extra cost.  We even know what other sounds have been tested and where to get duplicates.  If we find something that is better, we’ll use it.  Until then, we’ll stick with what we know works really well.

The Bottom Line: The BSX™ is impressive looking.  The Magnabait™ is ugly and looks like a green tombstone.  The BSX™ is complex with bells and whistles.  The Magnabait™ is brutally simple.  The BSX™ is kind of like a BMW or an Audi while the Magnabait™ reminds me of a pickup truck set up for off-road use.  I think both are worth the money.  It really depends on what you have to spend and how you want to travel.

A State Hatchery is like a printing press of money that never runs out. It provides fish for fishing, which is an affordable form of relaxation and entertainment, relieves stress, and promotes family time. Fishing can keep people busy and creates interest in the environment. License fees, tourism dollars, and taxes on fishing related equipment are enormous, profitable, and stimulate the economies of communities and states.

People have said that they are not sure that they agree with the statement that concentrating fishermen occasionally geographically on land or on water makes sense.  Instead they would rather see them distributed over larger areas. Would this reduce the overall damage and any costs to clean or repair it over diverse areas?

The truth is that damage of the underwater fish habitat is hard to understand. Most fish and their natural food supply chain requires plants that when missing or destroyed are slow to recover. In some cases, recovery is slower than related fish which grow in certain life stages. Fish also use plants to hide and nest in but can’t if the plants have been destroyed by props, oars, anchors, and fishing lures. Throwing money at the problem is less efficient as the area of the problem expands.

Because we can see it, trash is an easier part of the problem to understand. Consider that a can of campground trash spread over an acre of ground takes most of an hour and about $9.00 in labor to clean up. If you spread the same amount of trash over 1,000 acres it will cost a lot of time and $10,000 to $40,000 to clean up. Some will never be found. If part of that 1,000 acres is water, the cost will double or triple.

Time has proven that even well-meaning knowledgeable fishermen accidentally or unknowingly cause damage. For most of the fishing population, the result is far worse. The only way we can manage the problem is to motivate them not to spread out as much. Chasing fish to catch them is not very efficient or even satisfying for the fishermen or the environment. The MagnaBait motivates the fish to travel to the fisherman. That way everybody wins and management costs are lower. If these costs are not kept in check, governments simply can’t afford to protect most of the environment.

The other comment we often get is the idea that if the MagnaBait is super effective, won't it damage the fish population?  Even with MagnaBaits great calling power the fact that it will concentrate fishing activities in areas convenient for the fishermen, the remaining  unstressed habitat is unburdened and can efficiently perform its normal function: that is to breed and grow lots of fish. Besides which nearly every state monitors its fish stocks frequently and adjusts the fishermen’s limit of every species on an annual basis.

Hatcheries and aquaculture have been used for decades to supplement fish stocks in the appropriate size and numbers. Tourism dollars and taxes bring in dozens of times more dollars than aquaculture costs. Historically it has been the most profitable activity the state performs. In addition, the state sells fishing licenses for even more money. You can rest assured that few if any states will knowingly allow fish stocks to drop because the solution is easy and relatively inexpensive.

Keep in mind that fish are constantly patrolling and on the lookout for a “better” home. When a fish is caught, another fish will usually take over the premises in a day or two, sometimes in minutes or hours.

We of course hope that the MagnaBait will be a big seller for decades. With over 40,000,000 recreational fishermen in North America, we’ll probably never sell to more than about one or two percent of them at most. This would hardly be noticeable if at all in the fish population.

Since MagnaBait is disposable and runs on batteries we get asked what has been done to protect the environment? First of all our track record for battery pollution containment is nearly unmatchable. The MagnaBait is in a sealed structure made from the same plastic as football helmets. This extra cost on our part assures that if a MagnaBait is lost, the contents of its batteries is very unlikely to leach into the ecosystem.

Moreover, if they get lost, MagnaBaits are designed to float and eventually come to shore. People find them and either dispose of them or call our 800 number (molded onto each unit) for disposal instructions. This method is so effective that when several were smashed out of their storage building in the Florida Keys by Hurricane Wilma, dozens of people found them on the shore and called us. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, the farthest call came from Newfoundland, Canada, a distance of over 2,000 miles. Nearly all the units were eventually accounted for. We know of no other program to protect the environment from battery pollution that is nearly so effective.

Further environmental goodness is the fact that our batteries last a long time, usually over 200 hours of continous functioning. Can you name any other product that works so long on one set of batteries? Neither can we. Few products offer more than a few hours at most. This means fewer batteries get worn out and need to be disposed of.  Good for you and the enviornment.

Overall we are committed to better fisheries and environment and will continually look for ways to improve Magnabait to support both into the future - it is good for all of us.