Joe must have caught his fifth fish, yet I wasn’t getting a single tap on my line. Fishing at the yacht club in the afternoon on a low tide targeting barracuda was our usual Sunday afternoon bit of fun, but what was happening wasn’t fun at all, at least to me. What frustrates me most is that these fish are known to attack anything that moves; apparently not the case for me this afternoon!
When he started reeling-in his seventh fish, I couldn’t stand my frustration, I just had to walk up to him to see his magic bullet for the day. What I saw confused me even more. Our lures were very similar in size and shape, the actions weren’t far off, we were both doing almost identical sweeps of the rod while working our lures, and yet he was getting all the fish, while I couldn’t get a follow.
The lure I have been using was my one of my faithful Yo-Zuri Tobimaru, while he was using a Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow, both excellent lures for any predatory fish. While the brand was the same and actions of the lures were similar, the subtle difference was the belly colour. I found that his crystal minnow had a golden belly, while mine was silver. To prove this subtlety made the difference, I borrowed his lure and on the first cast, I nailed one.
The first time I walked into a tackle shop, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. There were no real tackle shops in the Philippines back then and when I finally walked inside a real one, I saw walls and walls of something I was obsessing about for a long time – Lures.
Lures come in several different configurations that cover anywhere from the water’s surface to several metres below it. They come in different shapes, weights, sizes and more importantly, a barrage of colour combinations!
We cannot have just one lure; as anglers, we are automatically hoarders of lures. The next colour might just be the one that the fish will bite the next time you get on the water.
I almost always have two or more colour variations of the same lure. The question begs to be asked;what is the best lure colour?
In the few years that I’ve been fishing, I have found the most effective colour to be the one that you find nice to your eyes…and tied to the end of your line. The 24-carat golden lure in your tackle box will not catch fish on its own! You have to tie it on and cast it out for it to be doing the catching bit.
Often, the colour of those lures which attract most fish are the ones that give you confidence. You tied one particular colour one day and it got you a lot of fish, so that lure and colour becomes your “confidence bait.” The one lure that catches the most fish is your most often-used one.
The fishing lure industry is massive, constantly introducing the same lure popped from the same mould with a different colour scheme. More often than not, these colours are very regional in their use and it is a ploy to catch more anglers than fish. That’s not to say that they won’t catch fish – they will. The next time you visit a tackle shop, look around for a colour pattern called “Rainbow Trout.” This particular colour scheme is designed to imitate the colours of the Rainbow Trout, a freshwater fish! Yet, using that colour in the salt doesn’t stop it from producing fish.
There have been millions of dollars spent on research on how the fish see the colours of our offerings.
However the old guide to choosing colours holds its own till this day: use bright lures on bright days, dark lures on dark days. This is a formula that has been expanded over the decades to also cover water clarity.
In very clear water, light colours and natural patterns rule supreme. In muddy or stained water, bright, almost-neon colours will be more visible, as would really dark colours since they will present a silhouette to the fish, something visible even from a distance.
Here’s a fact – the fish will, for certain, FEEL your lure before they see it. They sense vibrations from afar using their lateral lines. Colour would only be visible at shorter distances. Although I do believe that colours sometimes matter, for me, how the lure moves is more important than how it is coloured.
If colour really matters a lot, then why is “Red Head” one of the most often-used colour patterns by people the world over? It looks exactly what the name says; it is a lure with a solid white body and a red head, and in some instances, the body would be black and the head–you guessed it– coloured red.
The last time I checked, there is almost always a Red Head version of the lure in every manufacturer’s catalogue. There is no fish with that colour in the wild; the closest you would ever get would be koi and goldfish, fish that a wahoo would never see in its lifetime, yet it is one of the best colours for anything that eats fish.
Tech Talk
When you deal with colours, you deal with light. Remember that white light, as we see it, is a mix of the colours of the rainbow – ROYGBIV – Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.
Researchers say that after 3 metres red disappears – this is probably the reason why you see a lot of red coloured lines for sale today.
In ideal conditions with the sun directly above you and the waters glass calm, the penetration of red light only goes up to 3 metres. On the other end of the spectrum, blues and violets penetrate the deepest, at about 61 metres. This is the reason why at that depth, everything takes on a bluish hue. If you take this into consideration, it gives you a great guide on what colours to start with.
As with almost everything fishing, it is about preferences. What lures and their colours you choose to tie at the end of your fishing line, is your decision.
Silver and Gold
Handing Joe back his rod, I asked him, “Do you honestly think that the silver and flash on my lure makes a difference from the gold in yours?”
“Honestly, I always use silvers in the morning and when the sun is still bright, and then switch to gold in the afternoons. I read it somewhere and I have seen this sort of thing happen a few times…but you never know, it’s fishing!” Joe said.
I
went back to my tackle box and took out an entirely different lure. By the time I finished walking to the car and tying it on, almost all the golden light from the sun was gone.
“A black lure, are you really going to use that?” Joe asked.
Casting the lure out, I twitched it a few times and felt a heavy thump. “It’s a snapper!”
Till the next tide change,
Kit
Published in September 2012
