Picture this- you’re enjoying a day at the beach. The waves are crashing all around you, but you’ve grown accustomed to this. You’ve been in or around water all of your life, so navigating the surf has become second nature. Out of nowhere, a giant, foreign web rains down from the surface of the water and engulfs you and your family- after all, you are but a mere shrimp, and this sort of thing is common nowadays.
On a real level, I doubt an average shrimp has the ability to feel any type of emotional or psychological damage. I’ve never exactly had a conversation with one before. What I can tell you (from a real life human’s perspective) is that if you pick me up and put a pointy piece of metal straight through me, I will likely not be able to move very naturally.
The fact is, using a traditional hook as a means for keeping a critter in the water for bait is effective, but at the cost of potentially making said bait behave strangely. Yes, we’ve been using these traditional hooks for thousands and thousands of years- I’m not here to argue against their effectiveness. In fact, there are some great advantages to using them in many instances. You can place them wherever you want on the shrimp, use them for other types of bait, and chances are you’ve been using them for a long time so rigging and using them is probably very easy. If it ain't broke, don't fix it... right?
Well, if we all thought that way, we would never have any room for ingenuity. Thankfully there are always those out there who recognize room for improvement, or at least see the value in varying from the traditional path.
Case in point: there is a clever little product that shines as an alternative to your average fish hook, the Shrimp Walker. New and improved, the Shrimp Walker is a nifty piece of tackle that every inshore angler would benefit from having in their tacklebox. It is essentially a flexible, noninvasive harness that attaches to the head of a shrimp, with a hook on the backside of it.
This harness design allows for free, natural movement in the water, and helps minimize the shrimp death after continuous reeling. Essentially, it eliminates the stress and internal tearing that results from your average fishing methods. Because the Shrimp Walker is used under water, and its design is so lightweight, the pressure that the shrimp feels from the harness would probably be akin to you throwing on a backpack. That is to say, the effect is almost nonexistent.
Now, there is a bit of a caveat to all of this. There is a slight learning curve present when first using the product. It isn’t steep, but the first time you use one, you might waste a couple of shrimp before you get the hang of it. However, I would argue that this small shrimp sacrifice will pay dividends in the long run- the benefits of keeping your shrimp alive and intact for longer will far exceed this small cost. The last caveat to the product is that it tends to work best on shrimp sizes small to large.
Unless you’re using absolute monsters for bait on a regular basis this shouldn’t matter much, but it may be best to use a traditional hook if your shrimp measures in at over 6 inches or so (should you be so lucky).
The Shrimp Walker retails for less than 6 dollars a pack, depending on the product, and comes in a couple varieties for any situation you may encounter. Just paste https://www.palmbeachtackle.com/ into your browser to find out more or grab one for yourself. You'll probably end up saving some bait in the long run!