‘Information highway’ has reached the fishing world

By Sam Anderson
Outdoors Pro-Mo

You probably all have seen and heard of new products on the market that are supposed to help you catch fish. The latest of these products has been computer games.

Famous bass organizations and hunt clubs have commercials on TV getting you to purchase their latest video, or should I say computer game.

In essence, many of these are just games. For instance, they can help you select the right lure for the species you have selected but will they help you catch more and bigger fish?

Over the years, I fish many different bodies of water. I travel hundreds of miles on my way to the next lake, river, or reservoir only to start the process of finding fish over again. These are conditions that face not only professional anglers but also the weekend angler or new ones.

Does your family take a vacation in the summer time and fish a different area than you did last year? Have you on all occasions found fish? Once you have time to think about the day and conditions, do you make note of this in a little black book? Can you find an answer to type of lure and match it with the conditions from your little black book?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, you probably should look into a new computer software program called FishStat.

Believe me, I use to carry my little black book from tournament to tournament and eventually it was a diary of my past experience. I could sit and reread it at night but it did not help me when I was on the water. What I needed was an easy-to-use electronic journal that I could access from my laptop computer I carried with me to all the tournaments.

FishStat was the answer I was looking for.

Paul Baer, owner of Desktop Records in Mankato, Mn., came up with this user-friendly computerized database which stores information regarding fishing and hunting trips.

FishStat will help any angler be prepared to catch more and bigger fish for years to come. It is the easiest, most user-friendly and detailed logbook software on the market.

This product features easy-to-use buttons for New Record, Delete Record, Sort, Find, Find All, Print, Print Blank, Help, Quit, and List. It has 22 data fields in the FishStat mode and 21 in the HuntStat mode, which enables me to “sort” six different ways, and I can find items 484 different ways with any category (field), including compound finds.

FishStat allows me to enter data in a data entry mode, which includes pop up lists for certain fields. I also can print out a blank form and carry it with me in place of my black book and I can enter data on this sheet while on the water.

It does have spell check to keep records accurate and correct (this comes in handy especially if I am trying to remember how to spell a specific colour).

With all this cross-referencing, I don’t have to reread the entire diary to match the conditions of the day with my lure selection and trolling speed. Now I have all of this information at my fingertips.

The angler still has to locate and catch the fish but FishStat takes some of the guesswork out of it.

Now you are probably wondering what are some of the more important specifics, and can I get this program on my computer? The operating system for this program is Windows 95/98 and 8 MB RAM, Macintosh System 7.0 or later and 4 MB RAM. The program size is in the Windows 2.7 MB/Macintosh 3.4 MB, and the program engine is FileMaker Pro Runtime version 3.0.

Now the most important feature, beside the ability to sift through all the data you have collected from years of fishing, is it costs only $19.99 (U.S.), which includes fishing and hunting logs.

For more info, contact Baer at 110 Merlin Circle, Mankato, Mn., 56001-5732, call 1-507-345-8184, or e-mail to pbaer@outdoorlogbook.com