Our Story | Livingston Lures

Our Story

Founder Robert Castaneda joined the ranks in fishing innovation with his personal invention: Livingston Lures, featuring new Electronic Baitfish Sound (EBS™) Technology!

Castaneda attributes his unique idea to years of fishing as a young boy.

“One of my earliest memories was my father teaching me how to cast a net for baitfish, and then rigging them on a hook to catch bass.”
- Robert Castaneda, Founder of Livingston Lures

An avid collector of fishing lures as a boy, Castaneda experimented with his baits’ effectiveness by altering the color patterns or adding glitter or feathers.

Ever curious, inventor Castaneda began studying the natural sounds of baitfish: mating calls, defense sounds, and indicators of distress. He soon zeroed in on distress sounds of baitfish as they ‘ring a dinner bell,’ so to speak, for large game fish.



Castaneda continued his research of baitfish sounds to identify the origin: the swim bladder.

When fish compress their gill plates the muscles that move them beat against their swim bladder, known as drumming, which puts out a unique sound based on that fishes biological makeup.  These sounds travel indefinitely in a water environment, far past the vision range and can alert other fish that they are prey and entice hungry predatory fish or that they are predator fish and initiate a distressed signal for a the prey to flee, (Generating the distressed noise because the gills flex more rapidly resulting from the muscles moving faster and drumming on the swim bladder faster.) The swim bladder also acts as a resonating chamber to enable fish to hear. A fish’s lateral line detects sound vibrations and its inner ears pick up higher frequency sounds. Together, the three help the fish locate food and detect predators. Using this knowledge, Castaneda founded Livingston Lures and lures featuring sounds that attract a variety of predatory game fish.

The Future of Fishing

Every Livingston lure features the sounds of baitfish, Electronic Baitfish Sounds on an internal circuit board placed inside a sound chamber. The most common sound found is the sound of a Shad in distress.  Others, reflect the color patterns of the lures, Distressed Shad, Shad sounds, Crawfish, perch, bluegill, croaker, mullet, etc.  Once the lure makes contact with water, the electronic circuit is complete and the lure emits the sound in an 8-second cycle: 4 seconds of sound, 4 seconds of silence. EBS Technology is a powerful technology that bridges the gap from an artificial lure and live bait making the unnatural, natural.  It gives an angler a lure that will attract fish from more than twice the distance of a traditional lure with the advantage of attracting and catching more bass, walleye, pike, redfish, striper, and any other predatory fish you’re after.

EBS Technology is only the beginning! Read more about Livingston’s latest developments here.

Shop By Lure Type

Join the conversation