Barret Duncan Blog

30 years of replacing factory hardware taught me why round-bend trebles give fish all the leverage. I can’t count how many times I’ve stood on a boat deck and listened to a grown man scream at the water after losing a five-pound bass halfway back to the boat on a crankbait. The story is always identical: the fish crushed the plug, stayed buttoned up through the initial run, made one violent headshake three feet from the net, and sent the crankbait flying back into the boat while the fish swam away untouched. Nine times out of ten, the angler blames bad luck, dull hooks, or the fish jumping. Almost none of them look at the mechanical design of the hooks dangling beneath their lure. The cold truth is that most factory-installed crankbait trebles are designed to look attractive in plastic blister packs, not to keep heavy fish pinned during an acrobatic jump. The Physics of the Double-Leverage Trap When a bass eats a single-hook lure like a jig or a spinnerbait, you have a heavy, forged ho...

Most fishermen stare at structure on maps while the real feeding highways sit right under their hull. Take a stroll down the dock on any Saturday morning, and you’ll hear guys talking about points, humps, bridge pilings, and brush piles. Ninety percent of weekend fishermen look exclusively for vertical shape—something sticking up off the bottom that shows up like a neon sign on a contour map. I did the exact same thing for the first ten years I spent behind the console. If it wasn't a distinct contour line or a jagged rock pile, I rode right past it. It took a lot of empty tournament weigh-in bags for me to finally understand that the flat, boring stretches of bottom between the humps often hold three times more feeding fish than the structure itself. The key isn't how tall the structure is. The key is what the bottom is actually made of. The Trap of Soft Silt and Dead Muck Rain and river inflow wash millions of tons of topsoil, clay, and decaying leaves into our waterways ever...