Smartphone app will find bait, even if fish won't

Need bait? There's an app for that.

To the ever-growing sea of smartphone applications, add Bait Shops, a database of more than 10,000 bait-and-tackle locations - including 900 in New Jersey and Pennsylvania - for anglers in search of live eel, bunker, blood worms, or whatever else will get the job done.

The 21st-century answer to the fisherman's age-old quandary is the brainchild of Derek Trauger, an Orlando IT analyst and outdoorsman who also has created apps for finding boat ramps, marinas, and diving spots.

User input, plus his research and direct appeals from shop owners, keeps the database expanding, Trauger said.

"It showed me places I never even heard of, and I've been fishing around here a long time," Cape May fisherman Denny Somers, 58, said. "When the season gets going, it'll be good, because if my usual places are out of something, I'll have a list of other places right here at my fingertips."

Being on the water is "my favorite pastime," Trauger, 26, said. "So when I noticed a lack of marine and nautical apps that I could use as a recreational boater, I thought I would try to create some."

The list of freshwater and coastal shops is searchable by zip code, city, and GPS location, said Trauger, a doctoral student in modeling and simulation at the University of Central Florida. Since it became available in February, the 99-cent iPhone download has had about 1,000 nibbles.

Bill Wiggins, who works at Fin-atics, a saltwater bait-and-tackle shop in Ocean City, N.J., said he thinks the app will catch on as the weather warms and the pool of iPhone users grows.

"Finding bait with it, that's a neat concept," Wiggins said.

"New apps are created every day by ordinary people who are discovering new needs and new uses for the phones," said Josh Clark, author of Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders. "The bait app is one more manifestation of that. We've moved way beyond social networking and are getting into niche-market uses."

Desiree Kammerman was pleased to hear that Kammerman's Atlantic City Marina, operated by her family, is listed on Bait Shops.

"It could be a tremendous tool for helping people to find us without us having to do anything," she said. "It's like one more source for advertising your business."