I'm in the electic-skeptic camp. Maybe big voltages might have an effect, but for the small differences in voltage that a black box makes I don't believe it.
I wanted to see what the science actually said and went back and pulled up that UBC research paper. By no means does it give a definitive answer. It is a Master's thesis, not a peer reviewed (and critiqued) paper. The sample size was too small to be meaningful and the methodology had lots of room for improvement.
I'd say the reason that "top boats / highliners" used them was that the same captains who would be willing to spend money on one for that small improvement are probably the same captains that are putting the time and effort in to do lots of small things (keeping - and referring to - record of what works, finding the right areas/lures/depths/tides/etc.) that are going to improve their catch. Also, thinking you have a degree of control over what is a system with many variables is comforting. And if the boat next to you out fishes you one day and the captain is bragging about his black box, then spending a bit of cash to get one and then suffering from confirmation bias when you have a good day later one is going to make you feel good about your purchase (but if you had a bad or average day, its easy to blame on something else).
Before there where downriggers and before they became popular wire line on a peetz rod and reel with 2 pounds of weight and 60 feet caught one hell of a lot of big springs in sooke, I wonder why, could it have been something to do with the electric charge going down the wire?I'm in the electic-skeptic camp. Maybe big voltages might have an effect, but for the small differences in voltage that a black box makes I don't believe it.
I wanted to see what the science actually said and went back and pulled up that UBC research paper. By no means does it give a definitive answer. It is a Master's thesis, not a peer reviewed (and critiqued) paper. The sample size was too small to be meaningful and the methodology had lots of room for improvement.
I'd say the reason that "top boats / highliners" used them was that the same captains who would be willing to spend money on one for that small improvement are probably the same captains that are putting the time and effort in to do lots of small things (keeping - and referring to - record of what works, finding the right areas/lures/depths/tides/etc.) that are going to improve their catch. Also, thinking you have a degree of control over what is a system with many variables is comforting. And if the boat next to you out fishes you one day and the captain is bragging about his black box, then spending a bit of cash to get one and then suffering from confirmation bias when you have a good day later one is going to make you feel good about your purchase (but if you had a bad or average day, its easy to blame on something else).