CONVENTION CRASHING: ICAST

Sunday, July 15, 2007 | 2:28 a.m.

"Hey, you ever seen a squirt bait?"

Could it be something new at the fish show? Could it really be that here at the 50th ICAST (mottos, "Fishy. Very fishy" and "At ICAST, there are no limits"), among the nearly 6,000 people on Friday, among the proud rodmasters displaying their wares, among the crankin' frogs, jet nobs, hoo nobs, lip ripperz, rumblerz, stinky shrimp, deep jacks, deep jack juniors, super shad raps and wiggler worms - could it be there was something new?

Yes, this was the convention debut of Squirt Bait, hollow lures that dribble fish scent. Fill one up with a fish scent of your choosing, put it in the water and jig it on the line to release little puffs of stuff only fish could love.

And best of all, no dye, goop or cream all over your boat deck and your clothes, the stench of which caused Marc Rice's wife to try to ban him from the house after he'd been fishing.

Inspired by this repeated criticism of his odor, the landscape contractor, who fishes both fresh and saltwater ("I'm bi-fishal," he says), went into his garage armed only with a spirit of invention and possibly some tools and materials.

From this forge, Squirt Bait was born. Now, as of last Friday, Rice has the first factory models back and he's ready to sell his first 16 types of lures.

"I'm working on kind of a tight budget," Rice said. "I don't want to rob my daughter's college fund to build bait."

He said success and the funds for new models shouldn't be too long in coming because, frankly, there's nothing on the market that can compete.

"Everyone talks about bleeding bait, bleeding this, bleeding that - all it is is a red painted hook," Rice said. "This is the real bleeding bait. Every time you give it a little jerk, it squirts."

Creatures from the North

The worm supplier to Wal-Mart, Kmart and other marts sells a lot of worms. About 200 million every year, said Dan Beaudoin, an inheritor of DMF Bait Co. (motto, "Our worms catch fish or die trying!").

Now DMF of Waterford, Mich., does not farm worms. No sir, these are night crawlers, and take too long to farm. You have to harvest them. Well, not you. No, that's a job for seasonal workers, called "pickers," who strap cans to their legs and miners' lights to their heads and work midnight to sun up.

So does DMF buy the worms from the pickers? No, middlem en called coolers buy the worms from the pickers and DMF buys from the coolers and then resells the worms to retailers. It's kind of a middle-middleman for worms.

And where do the worms come from? Canada.

"The soil base in Toronto is really conducive to worms," Beaudoin said.

Product: Brimlight

A soft, foam rubber insert that fits on the underside of a hat brim. Five LED lights mounted at angles provide a 120-degree horizontal arc of light and a 90-degree vertical one. Runs on four lithium batteries for up to 40 hours. Comes in red and white light models, with red being preferred by pilots and hunters.

From S&F products of Placentia, Calif. Available in better stores everywhere or online at brimlightsusa.com for $17.95.

Update: A million dollars and marlin-free

Last year McDaddy's Fishing Lures debuted a million-dollar, solid gold diamond-encrusted marlin lure and announced its plans to fish with it in a tournament. They did do so, without catching anything. It was, however, struck by a sailfish, which knocked off two diamonds.

Read:

"Beware Troutzilla, King of the Monster Trout"

- a Yum Bait poster featuring said Troutzilla towering out of a lake, spitting light ning, flipping a boat and being attacked by World War II-vintage planes.