Posted 25 August 2011 - 03:51 PM
I thought I'd reply to this thread because I noticed there was some confusion with the topic of "charging" your spoons. These glow in the dark lures have a coating on them that fluoresce when enough light energy has been given to them. Notice I said light and not heat - rubbing your lure will not produce the same results as a camera flash... in fact, you will most likely damage the glow in the dark coating via rubbing.
Now that you know that energy from light is important, you can connect the dots as to why a flash from a camera charges up your lure better than a headlamp. This is because a flash from a camera supplies more energy than the headlamp. I say more energy because the INTENSITY of the light from the camera is much stronger than the headlamp which usually houses white LEDs (which are actually blue LEDs which excite a phosphorous coating that emits white light). If you want an even better alternative, you would use ultra-violet emitting LEDs. The reason why is that ultra-violet light has more energy than the visible spectrum and thus, you are now supplying your glow in the dark spoon coating with more energy to store and emit - however, the storage of energy is limited to the amount and quality of the coating on the spoon. If you have these spoons, you can typically charge them just by leaving them outside to sit in direct sunlight which has ultra-violet components to it. The charge will probably last only a couple of minutes after but the point is proven that ultra-violet light is needed for maximum brightness and emission length associated with your lure. One word of caution is that ultra-violet light may/may not deteriorate the coating of the lure. With that said, I take no responsibility if you have damaged your lure experimenting with exposure to the sun for lengthy periods.
As for the unit which a link was given that was specially made for spoons - well, I think it's a gimmick in the fact that it takes advantage of a fisherman's lack of knowledge in this type of discussion. I suspect it uses ultra-violet LEDs and just flashes them to save on battery power. You can actually make one of these units for less than $10 in material costs - perhaps order the parts on Digi-key or Sayal. I'm thinking of making one since I lost my headlamp and don't want to rely on my camera flash for charging my bait. Hell, you could even place a pattern on your lure (such as scales) and then flash the bait to make it have a pattern to stand out from the other fishermen. If you have a a LED flashlight for your keychain, you can even replace the current LED with an ultra-violet LED - but would probably drain the battery faster.
Anyway, there are many alternatives to charge up your lure but hands-down ultra-violet light is the way to go since it provides more energy to the coating and doesn't have to be as intense as light from the visible spectrum.