Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ? Few anglers are willing to admit it, but one of the biggest keys to saltwater tournament fishing success is a cellular phone.

Talk all you want about the importance of lively bait, sharp hooks and good knots. No matter the species you’re after, anglers with good cell phones and good friends will put more fish into their boats almost every time. That’s because they fish where the fish are.

If they’re not catching fish, they simply start calling friends until they talk to someone who is. Then they find their buddy and start fishing. They still need to know what they’re doing, but as South Florida sailfish guru Nick Smith of North Palm Beach once told me, “Give me dull hooks and a spot where the fish are, and I’ll do pretty good.”

Joe Neber used a cell phone to run away with the Yamaha Contender Miami Billfish Tournament last month. The first-day leader, Neber’s boat Contender One was fishing off Haulover Inlet on the second morning when Neber called Custom Rod & Gun in Lighthouse Point to see if the sailfish bite was still hot off Boca Raton.

When he got a favorable report, his boat sped north and caught nine sailfish in less than four hours to clinch the tournament with a day of fishing remaining.

In last year’s Rodeo, first-day leader Perfect Chemistry was struggling on the second day north of Hillsboro Inlet until Jamie Bunn got a call from a friend who had caught several fish off Hallandale Beach. Bunn and his crew ran south, caught a bunch of tuna and won the tournament.

Back in the old days of tournament fishingthe early 1990sanglers would have to listen to the VHF radio for clues on where to fish. The trouble with that is not everyone who reports catches on the radio tells the truth, either deliberately or because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I remember fishing in a dolphin tournament where we’d caught a couple of quick fish in less than 200 feet of water off Port Everglades. Then some bozo got on the radio and started talking about the big dolphin that had surrounded his boat five miles off the steeple.

For all we knew, the guy could’ve been telling the truth and didn’t realize that he was 10 miles off the steeple. Or maybe he was just messing with everybody. Our captain decided to move to the steeple and we never saw another fish.

A cell phone is also a big advantage over a VHF radio because when you use the radio to ask other boaters about their fishing, anyone can listen in. Some anglers use code words to switch channels: Someone on Channel 68 will say, “Go up two,” which to most people means they are going to converse on Channel 70, except the anglers will talk on Channel 8. Now, most people use the radio to tell their buddies to turn on their cell phones.

Given the range and speed of the big center consoles favored by local tournament anglers these days, all they need is a cell phone that can store the numbers of fishing friends from Key Largo to Fort Pierce. If the fishing is slow off Hillsboro Inlet and they find out it’s hot off Jupiter Inlet or Fowey Light, they don’t think twice about making the run.

I think using cell phones takes away something from tournament fishing. So do the professional bass circuits, which prohibit the use of cell phones during tournaments except in an emergency. Otherwise, some pros would have friends stationed all around a lake and simply wait for them to call and say, “Roland, they’re schooling off Ritta Island!”

Instead, bass tournaments are won by the anglers with the best game plan, not the best calling plan.