There was no bait and switch, per se.
It was a total Fairfield sweep as the Teachers and Researchers Advancing Integrated Lessons in STEM (TRAILS) program sponsored by Purdue University hosted its annual National High School Fishing Lure Design Contest, and Fairfield claimed all three of the top spots in the nation in the soft lure category.
Fairfield students Jasper Carl, Boden Eppert and Michael Moore were first place overall in the national contest, with entries from coast to coast. Second place winners included Mussie Hochstetler, Mallory McGowen and Myla Miller. Third place were Zoie Miller, Jaydon Riegsecker, Breckin Stair and Zeke Yoder. All students were awarded official certificates from Purdue University in recognition as well as Cabela’s gift cards.
Fairfield’s STEM involvement included supervision from teachers Amy Charlwood, Jim Jones and Dennis Schooley as both the biology and engineering wings were involved in creation of the lures.
“We are thrilled to death that we had anybody as a winner. And to have the top three in the whole country is something,” Jones said. “It’s really cool. We’ve done state contests before where we’ve had kids place, but never a first place. So to have that at a national level is really something.”
The process involved 3-D printed designs, lending to a castable lure with spinning rods and had to be a biomimicry design, natural action, life-like size, and designed to target specific fish. Purdue judges were given the lures in the spring to test in real life fishing scenarios through the Purdue Bass Club, mostly used to catch small pan fish such as blue gill and crappies.
Purdue didn’t report back to Jones on what exactly the lures caught, if anything, but Jones noted the students did take a series of lures out to Fidler’s Pond in Goshen and landed a few fish.
“As a school, we have been doing this for eight years between Mrs. Charlwood, Mr. Schooley and myself,” Jones noted of the contest hosted by Purdue. “The STEM project involves science kids studying aquatic insects and the engineering designing the aquatic insects to turn them into fishing lures. These are similar to what you can buy at Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops, but nobody makes aquatic insects. It’s either worms or minnows.”