Successful Testing of Hydrowave

A little more than one year ago, the manufacturer of the new Hydrowave sound attraction unit asked me to perform a complete set of actual test of this unit to obtain an independent view of the effectiveness of the equipment. The scientific concept behind the Hydrowave is that it generates a series of sounds that are transmitted into the water, that simulate the sounds of large bait fish schools. There are a series of different sounds that can be selected that represent different activities of these bait schools. The theory is that is these sounds are transmitted into the water, predator fish like bass will get excited hearing and feeling these sounds and they will become stimulated to bite actively. Kevin Vandam, the nationally know professional fisherman is one of the figureheads behind this equipment, and it was through his organization that I received the request.
I received a complimentary unit in December of 2011 and started testing immediately. The unit is compact and relatively simple to install and operate.
The primary objective of the Hydrowave is to assist bass anglers to catch more fish and the technique usually used by these anglers is casting of artificial bait in relatively warm water conditions. Obviously testing in the winter months was not exactly the conditions for which the Hydrowave was designed, but I felt that it would provide valuable data over a broader spectrum of conditions. Through 25 days of testing and more than 90 hours of operation in cold water, the results indicated that my catch rate increased from 1.30 fish per hour to 2.11 fish per hour when the unit was actually operating. These results are shown in the next illustration.

The warm water testing conducted in the spring and summer of 2012 showed even better results with the catch rate increasing from 0.79 per hour to 1.80 per hour, an increase of more than two to one. These results are also shown.

I carefully designed these tests so that various elements that could alter the results were eliminated such as weather, pressure, water temperature etc.My conclusion was that the Hydrowave does indeed excite the bass for a more aggressive bite. The report that I submitted to the Hydrowave organization was summary in nature but the file of data collected during these tests was extensive, including photos of the fish caught and also photos of sonar images at the time of the catches.

On Saturday, 9 December 2012, I presented the test report to Kevin Vandam at the 2012 annual Ryan Newman fishing tournament at Lake Norman, North Carolina.