ELECTRORECEPTION OF FISH
One of the most exasperating experiences of an angler's life is sitting in their boat, drinking coffee, and watching all of the boats around them catching fish. Now put yourself on a commercial troller doing the same thing! This is your livelihood. You have to catch these fish in order to feed your family!
That was me in my early years, during my first attempt to catch sockeye at an opening off of the Fraser River. If it wasn't for winter employment, that may have ended my salmon trolling career. I hung in there and started to research. I wanted to know, ... why?
One of the first 'eye opening' bits of information that is burned into my memory banks was of a study done on the Columbia River. A university (I believe), installed 2 large steel tubes in the river, applied positive voltage to one and negative voltage to the other. The results were that the returning salmon would only travel through the positive charged tube and not the negative one.
I learned about boat bonding systems as well as the application of positive voltage fields encompassing my arrangement of lures. I never left the dock after that without a Russell Black Box and I never 'sucked the hind [Bleeeeep!]' again.
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Fish communicate, navigate, see with it, and some hunt with electroreception. There have been countless studies done on the subject. I have placed links to some of those studies on my web page www.lurecharge.com click on 'RESEARCH' page.
Here are a few exerpts from those pages.
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Brian L. Keeley. Philosophy/Neuroscience/Psychology Program, Washington University in St. Louis
“By the turn of the century, some began to suspect that, in addition to the ability to generate elec­tricity, some animals could detect the presence of electricity in their environ­ment. The electrosensory hypothesis gained credibility in 1917 when Parker and van Heusen discovered that the non-bioelectrogenic catfish, Ictalurus (Amiurus) nebulosus, could detect galvanic and direct currents. They did so through a series of experiments in which they presented blindfolded catfish with glass, wooden, and metal rods. The fish were able to detect the presence of metallic rods at a distance, but only reacted to the glass and wooden rods when they touched the surface of the fish. They went on to show that the type of behavior (to flee from or to approach and “nibble” at the rod) elicited by the presentation of rods could be modulated by changing the length of rod exposed to the water. Parker and van Heusen correlated the amount of exposed metal with the amount of galvanic current produced by the rods, and then repro­duced the behavioral results using direct electrical currents presented via electrodes placed in the aquaria with the catfish.
They go on to say: Notably, they do not posit an electroreceptive modality. Rather they propose that electric detection is mediated by the gustatory system, more specifically, by the taste buds. Their reasoning was that, electrical stimulation elicits feeding responses and these behaviours are typically mediated by the gustatory system. The head of the catfish is the most sensitive to stimulation, and most taste buds are found in the head, and “This assumption is completely in line with what has been known of human taste organs. For these are easily stimulated by direct currents of very low energy value”.
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Professor Dr. Bernd Kramer
Universität Regensburg, Zoologisches Institut

ELECTRORECEPTION AND COMMUNICATION IN FISHES
“Being electroreceptive enables a fish to lead a secret, nocturnal life, undetected by diurnal predators. As no living organism is able to prevent weak electric currents leaking from its body it is of great selective advantage to detect these signals from a distance, even when the potential prey is buried under sand.”

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Daniel Nomura – Masters of Science degree – zooligy dept. UBC.
He did his thesis aboard a commercial salmon troller in the Straight of Georgia.
After a summer of testing the voltage attraction of chinook and sockeye salmon, Daniel's conclusions were as such.
* Chinook were attracted and best caught when trolling wire voltages were at .5 volts and above.
* Sockeye were attracted and best caught when wire voltages were in the 1.0 volt range
* Both species showed obvious reduced catch rates when negative voltage values were applied.