1) Will you guarantee that I will catch fish like a pro with the Black Mamba baits?

The only guarantees in this life are death and taxes! Far too many people believe that if they have all the right equipment and all the right lures, they will become top class fisherman. You know as well as I do that this is nonsense. I also have no control over where or how well you fish. The pros are where they are because they have spent a lifetime of learning to understand the fish they pursue and where they like to live. There is NO substitute for experience!

There is no such thing as a 'Magic Bullet' when it comes to fishing lures, if there was, everyone would be using the same lure! All fishing lures have a niche and all of them work, at some time, on some fish. However, as all fishermen are not created equal, neither are fishing lures. Some lures do work far better than others and the Black Mamba baits are some of those very few outstanding lures that consistently outproduce the rest. What I can tell you, is that you can expect to catch a few more fish and, on average, they are likely to be bigger than you would normally expect to catch.

Based on personal experience and feedback I have received from satisfied fishermen who have used the Black Mamba baits, I can tell you that these lures have consistently outproduced other baits, in a very wide variety of situations, on many occasions.

By way of example, on one of my favorite lakes, I often fish for Smallmouth Bass in very clear water 4 to 10 feet deep. The lake gets a good amount of fishing pressure and I have observed the Smallmouth completely ignore, spinnerbaits, crankbaits, suspending jerkbaits, all manner of soft plastic baits including tubes. When I throw the Black Mamba baits out and start my retrieve, it's like someone has flipped on the light switch. On a very few occasions, like after a cold front, for example, the fish might be finnicky and may either just follow or 'nip' at the baits. I have found that if I cast to the same spot and work them back to the boat as fast as I can go, the bait is usually intercepted by a bronze bombshell with a heart stopping topwater explosion! This strategy works equally well on following Muskie too. This has happened too many times, to too many people to be a fluke.

2) Why should I buy the Black Mamba baits when they are just another jerkbait?

We hesitate to 'pigeon-hole' these baits as jerkbaits because the Black Mamba baits are far more versatile than any other bait, period, that we know of. Of course, there are a few similarities with some soft plastic jerkbaits but the Black Mamba baits can do so much more, that they are truly in a league of their own.

We challenge you to find another bait that will suspend, jump out of the water, skip like a stone, turn back on itself, has as many hooking options, as many fish-triggering actions, dive, keep its great action whether you use light line, heavy line or even steel leaders, weighted or unweighted. The Black Mamba baits can be fished anywhere from superfast to deadstick slow and anywhere in between without losing any of the great action. You would need tackle boxes full of lures to even come close to matching the versatility of this one fishing system.

Add to that the totally weedless attributes of the Black Mamba baits, the ease of use (you can be rigged and fishing in a few seconds and you don't need a degree in astrophysics to use them), you can catch all sizes of fish from 8 inch Bass, 10 inch Walleye right the way up to 50 inch plus Muskies, or any other predatory fish, in either saltwater or freshwater.

If you could wave a magic wand and make the 'perfect' bait, it would appeal to every sense of the fish and have nothing about it which will turn the fish off from biting. It would move, look, feel, taste and 'sound' like a real baitfish. It would have no rattles, no mechanical noises or movement and would glide fluidly through the water at any level. It would be inexpensive, easy to use and highly effective whether you're a complete beginner or a top pro-fisherman. Most of all, it would be in the water most of the time catching lots of fish. The Black Mamba baits are the only baits we can think of that score heavily in every single area. Please refer to our Black Mamba Challenge questionnaire and compare your favorite lure to the Black Mamba baits.

3) What makes the Black Mamba system better value-for-money than other kits I can buy?

It's a sad fact that most other kits seem to emphasize piece count to try and convince you that it's great value-for-money. You will usually only get 24 or so of a single style of bait in maybe two or three sizes. The rest of the pieces are 'trinkets', small terminal tackle items of questionable quality and value to the fisherman. These extra pieces are usually proprietary and cannot be bought anywhere else, so you're locked into that manufacturer whether you like it or not.

The Black Mamba kit on the other hand, features 4 different baits and gives you 48 baits, twice as many as our competitors. It is the baits that are the important part of the equation not the piece count. The action of the baits determines whether or not the fish will attack them in the first place and the larger number of baits mean you can catch more fish before you need to go out and buy some more.

Because everyone has their own preferences for terminal tackle, we made a conscious decision to make the Black Mamba kit 100% compatible with mainstream terminal tackle products. This means that you can buy any hooks, jigs and and weights you choose, right off the shelf, from any tackle store or catalogue company.

In addition to getting twice as many lures, the Black Mamba baits also come in a Plano tackle box, not a cheap, blown-plastic 'cookie' box. The Instructional Video that comes with the kit is around 40 minutes long and packed with useful tips on how to catch more fish.

When you try the Black Mamba baits, you will soon realize there is absolutely nothing cheap and nasty about our kit, that they are the most versatile baits you have ever used and that they are worth every cent of what you paid for them. Above all, they really catch fish! Please refer to the Black Mamba Challenge questionnaire and compare your favorite lure to the Black Mamba baits.

4) I’m a novice, what will the Black Mamba baits do for me?

Novices love the Black Mamba baits because they are so easy to use, there’s nothing difficult about using them. You can take out one rod, tie one hook on, use any of the four baits and catch fish. You can have them rigged and in the water catching fish in a few seconds. As you get more experienced at using the baits, you can refer to the Instructional Video to add even more great fish-catching actions to your repertoire.

5) Could I take the Black Mamba baits alone and catch fish?

The reason that most people have tackle boxes full of different lures is that each lure has its own strengths and its own niche. The Black Mamba baits cover off so many niches and are so effective at making fish of all sizes and feeding moods bite, that you could go out with just these and catch at least as many fish and usually more and bigger fish than you normally would expect to catch. Please refer to the Black Mamba Challenge questionnaire and compare your favorite lure to the Black Mamba baits.

6) How do the Black Mamba baits compare to my favorite lures?

Please refer to the Black Mamba Challenge questionnaire and compare your favorite lure to the Black Mamba baits.

7) What is it about the Black Mamba baits that make them so effective?

I'm not a fish, so I can only guess, but I would say that it is because there is nothing about these lures that puts fish off from biting. They appeal to all of the fish's senses.

It's a fact that fish can become accustomed to mechanical noises and movements and be turned off by them. We've all heard about hot new baits that only worked for a short time until the fish got used to them. Fish cannot become accustomed to the Black Mamba baits because they move so naturally through the water.

The senses of the fish come into play as follows; first the bait might be heard, secondly it may be either seen or its vibration pattern is felt through the fish's lateral line. The fish makes the decision to strike usually based on the look and, to a smaller degree, the vibration pattern (this depends on water clarity and available light). The ferocity of the strike is determined by how realistic the lure looks/feels and the feeding mood of the fish.

The smell of the lure is only of real importance when the fish is right on top of the lure and taste is only important when the lure is in the fish's mouth. I don't buy the marketing myth of scented lures leaving a 'taste trail' in the water. Surely, all baitfish leave a scent trail, don't they? Yet predators don't choose to attack every baitfish they see.

The basic programming in every predator's brain is to attack injured, weak or dying baitfish because they are an easy meal, one in which the gain outweighs the expenditure of energy. That decision to attack is based on the look and movement of the lure. Scents certainly won't harm and they become of more value when fish are in a neutral or negative feeding mode and make a close inspection of the lure before biting. In these cases, the scent may push the fish off the fence and cause it to bite and then hold on.

In most of the footage we got when shooting the Black Mamba infomercial and Instructional Video, and we caught many hundreds of fish on camera, the baits were pre-production models and had no scent in them at all. The fish committed to bite because they thought the baits looked real. Even though the baits were unscented, many fish still swam off and tried to eat them! The production baits that we are shipping now are impregnated with Black Mamba fish attractant and they do make a small improvement to catch rates when fish are finicky.

8) Why did you choose the colors you did for the Black Mamba kit?

The colors were chosen very deliberately. Bear in mind that the fish are looking at the baits from underneath, with the sky as their backdrop. White is the color of the belly of most baitfish, black gives the best contrast against an overcast sky which is white. Black also works best at night when the surface is illuminated by moonlight and as a side benefit, it looks a lot like a leech, a tasty morsel for most fish. Red is the opposite in the color spectrum to blue and so the pink color gives a great contrast against a clear blue sky. The natural colored baits excel in pressured waters where the fish are very cautious and/or in clear water where the fish get a good look at the bait. This range of colors covers off most situations that you will face and allow you to catch more fish.

9) Where on earth did you get the names of the baits?

That's a story in itself! If you've never tried to register a name for a fishing product, you can't believe how frustrating and difficult it is. Fishing is a well-established sport and most of the names that you can imagine have been used before. We must have gone through about 300 names for the company alone and we ended up using the catch-all Fishing Systems Inc. which gave us a lot more leeway. It started out with the first bait, the Slick Willy. The inventor of the lures is called Bill (short for William) Jones, hence the Willy part. As the lure is smooth and slides through the water and weeds with ease, we added the word Slick. Simple enough, right?

Not on your life! In between us naming the lure and getting approval from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) (a period of over 9 months), a certain President was caught with his pants down, so to speak. The press named him, guess what? Slick Willy!

So after 9 months or more of calling the bait the Slick Willy, we received notification from the USPTO that they were disallowing the name Slick Willy because they felt it was disparaging to President William Jefferson Clinton. I felt like writing back to the USPTO to ask them to tell the press not to call the President the same name as our lure because it was disparaging to the baits!

After an eloquent appeal to the USPTO by my legal counsel partner, the name was eventually allowed. There were two other products applying for the same name. One was a lubricating jelly and the other was a cigar! I wonder if they were successful? The Ribbed Willy was next and the link is obvious. Then followed the Wild Willy, named for its erratic action. The Atomic Wedgie was a little bit different than the other three baits, so we figured it needed a slightly different name.

We originally called the series of baits the Wedgeheads because of their unique design characteristics. Unfortunately, the name Wedgeheads was also disallowed by the USPTO because there is a spinnerbait by Stanley Jigs called the Wedge and it was deemed to be too similar.

As the bait was so remarkable, we figured it wasn't just good, it was Atomic. So, we ended up with an Atomic Wedgie! Hey, fishing is supposed to be fun, so why not have some fun with the names of the baits?