DURHAM -- If necessity is the mother of invention, then bait-slimed beverage cans and stubbed toes are profound motivators.
They also are what inspired Raleigh resident Danny Sykes' beer- and bait-cooling creation.
A sign maker by trade and an avid offshore angler, Sykes invented the Max Bait Tray System, aluminum trays that stack vertically in a cooler. The trays hold bait, and cold is conducted from tray to tray through the metal, a money-saving set-up that requires ice be used only on the bottom of a cooler.
"I had an old 23 [-foot] Pursuit that had a fish box in the floor," Sykes said at his sign shop at Northgate Mall in Durham. "It couldn't accommodate a dolphin [mahi mahi] more than a couple of feet long. I bought a larger cooler to accommodate the fish and had another cooler for bait and beverages."
The additional cooler took up more deck space, but keeping beverages and baits together made for nasty beer cans.
But Sykes had an idea.
"I made it out of a need for me," he said. "The aluminum tray handles touch each other, so the cold is conducted throught the aluminum. That was intentional. The fact that it actually saves you money in ice was an accident."
Sykes, like most offshore anglers, uses dead ballyhoo, a small baitfish, to troll for tuna, dolphin, king mackerel and other species. But when dead baitfish have long exposure to water, they becomes soft and less durable. A dry bait, brined before the trip and stored cold, is best, Sykes said. The trays also work well for surf and pier anglers, he said.
The trays are manufactured when the sign business is slow, which has been the case during the past year or so.
The trays are cut from 4-foot-by-10- foot sheets of aluminum by a computer-controlled router.
Then Sykes smoothes the edges with a sponge sander and files. He peels a protective masking off the metal and cleans the surface with alcohol before placing the blanks in a flat-bed printer for a logo to be applied. Afterward, Sykes uses elbow grease and a metal steel jig with premeasured slots to bend the blanks into finished trays.
Sykes said he can can make 23 trays in 2 hours and 15 minutes.
"It's not a career change," Sykes said. "It's not even a money-maker. It's an idea that might work."
It works well for one of his customers, Apex resident Danny Wilson.
Wilson, 51, fishes a 28-foot Carolina Classic out of Beaufort and has used Sykes' bait trays for three years.
"It's a great system," Wilson said by phone during a trip to Emerald Isle. "It doesn't take much room on your boat, and your chicken and beer doesn't smell like bait."
One of the first retail outlets to carry the trays was The Neuse Sports Shop in Kinston.
"The first summer it moved kind of slow. For most anglers if [a product] is not tried and true, it takes a while [to catch on]," Kevin Herrington, tackle and marine buyer for the store, said recently by phone. "It's a good product and will help the man with a small boat."
Sykes, clad in a blue-vented Columbia fishing shirt and khaki shorts in his spartan sign shop, said the bait trays are in 17 retail outlets.
At $30 each, they aren't cheap, but not much associated with offshore fishing is. Sykes said an angler will recoup his cost in saved ice and bait.
The next step for Sykes taking his product to the International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades, known simply as ICAST in the fishing industry. The trade show is scheduled for July 15-17 in Orlando, Fla. More than 2,000 industry buyers attended the 2008 show in Las Vegas.
"This thing was never intended to sell," said Sykes, who is married with two daughters. "I wanted it to save space on my boat. It's still in its development stage."
With a little luck in Florida, Sykes' idea of a better bait-storage system could take off and develop some positive cash flow.
"Then this may be more than a sideline," he said.
