For years, Berkley has designed soft baits around the premise that if you better understand how fish smell and taste, you can build baits that get more bites. That idea led to the development of PowerBait, Gulp, and MaxScent, and Berkley’s latest release brings them all together in a lure meant to fool even the most pressured gamefish.
This winter, I got an early look at the Berkley Lab Series. The clearest takeaway was that this was not just another soft-plastic launch built around a new profile, a fresh package, and fish-catching colors. Berkley is positioning Lab Series as something bigger — a premium bait platform that pulls together the company’s work with chemistry, fish biology, scent science, taste formulation, and visual triggers into one system.
The Berkley Lab Series was built backwards from the fish. What can a largemouth smell? What can a smallmouth taste? What can a walleye see? How long can a bass detect the bait after it hits the water?
This is not just about throwing more scent into a bait. It’s about understanding how multiple bite triggers can work together in what the Berkley lure designers call “bio-stacking.”
The most intriguing element in that stack is the outer “slime layer.” As part of what Berkley is calling a “layered bait,” the water-activated MaxScent Slime sends off a plume of scent as the bait hits and falls through the water. When I got an early look at the baits this month, they were shown to milk out scent continuously for more than 15 minutes when submerged. Some of the slime stays attached to the bait, providing the flavor that convinces biting fish to hold on for longer.
Berkley calls the Lab Series a “platform” indicating there is much more to come from this genre of baits. In the initial release, however, anglers can expect to see a finesse worm, a flat worm, and a minnow released in early May.
Prior to the release, however, several bass pros got their hands on the baits, among them Dylan Nutt, who used them to win the Bassmaster Classic earlier this month, proving Berkley’s claims that the Lab Series was designed to fool pressured fish in high-pressure situations.
To learn more about the Lab Series, visit Berkley-Fishing.com