Does lure colours matter that much...?

[Herman Nel]

Hi Guys!

Although I have caught thousands of bass on thousands of lures over the years, colour selection has always been something I wondered about.

I know what to use where and when more or less and most of the time...but I read an article the other day by a top US angler and I quote him and highlighted the second sentence:

"Does color matter?...in a lure?...to a fish?
Well, does your playful dog care if the frisbee you toss it is green or pink plastic? Does your housecat paw a grey fuzzy catnip toy more excitedly than it swipes a blue fuzzy toy? When a bass pounds your bait the instant it hits bottom, does it care if you tossed in a green or pink worm, or a grey or a blue one? Or was it a hint of red flake...or a few faint flecks of purple that excited the bass?
To me, my answer is that color does NOT matter (and here comes the tricky part as long as I am tossing a color that is catching fish. It's a twisted answer I give you, but if you follow the banks and turns below, then lure color should never really matter to you again, you'll never need a confidence color nor choose a favorite. You won't have any."


Makes one wonder the bit about the frisbee colour , now doesn't it? LOL!


Regards


Herman

 

[Little Green Fish]

DJY SIEN,

Now, I've noticed this as well, but fishing one prticular venue, several times,with the last trip the most significant of them all in relation to the question, here's what I discovered:

1. we've tried four (4) colour options in the exact same lure and did so throughout the entire day meaning that we (I personally) jumped between these colours and one colour stood out as getting whacked 15 times more than the others and strangely enough they all had the same base colours.  It was taken a step further where we tried another base colour (this time only two varients were available) same results as the other three not-so-productive colours.

2. I then did a field test on the lures I make myself (the flops posted in the "Soon" thread in the DIY Lure section) and again these all had different colours (same patterns) and again only one got the fish to commit, all fished exactly the same ito rigs, actions even placement of the lures.

3. Fishing this venue at night was the only time that colour did not matter, but shape and size still seemed to have some sort of role although not as strict as during the day.

I for one believe that colour does matter.  The idea that the dog chasing the frisbee doesn't care whether it's green or pink plastic makes complete sense, but remember the dog is playing, so is the cat, but the fish is busy feeding and therefor does have to decide whether it's edible or not.

Seriously, animals playing (domesticated ones reffered to, with a higher intelligence) cannot be the standard to judge and compare the behaviour of fish that does not play but feed to survive and that knows what is edible (pre-programmed and perhaps a level of evolutionary knowledge passed on due to abundance of specific food sources) and what is not.

Further to this, there's way too many guys fishing all over the world at all levels of the game/sport that goes home way too many times in their lives without catching anything for the "colour does NOT matter" statement to be true, because if it was nobody would seriously need any info and places like sealine and it would be called catching and not fishing, seriously.

Just my humble 2 Trillion Zim dollars

 

[Koos Bass]

I think it does,

Went sight fishing one day with a friend and we saw a nice fish, he tossed a junebug fluke about a meter past the fish and started back. nothing for about 3 casts. I came along with a mardigras fluke also hooked mojo like the junebug one and first cast just past the fish and bam i was on.

i think water clarity makes a diff and weather they are feeding. when they can see if it doesnt look like real bait in the dam. and there are reaction bites where just about anything will be taken if it poses a threat to them.

also sight fishing we saw 5 comp winner fish in bout 1.5 feet of water but nothing in a natural way would get them to bite and just for the %$@ of it Deon chucked a ugly Green pumpkin and chart swirl YO-MAMA right into them and bam.

guess it depend on the fish

 

[basslover]

I need to agree with LGF...

This same venue he is talking about ( well i think its the same one i also fish a lot)
I have noticed at this venue that colour does matter...
At night i was casting out a glow in the dark fluke and had maybe 1 or 2 out of 10 casts then tried a white fluke maybe 2 or 3 out of 10, then i changed to a watermelon red and it was around 9 to 10 out of 10???

Anyways ill leave it there, you can decide...But i stick to three or four colours...

 

[Little Green Fish]

The crucial thing is animals that play doesn't care what colour it is, they will how ever become picky when it comes to shapes, sizes and textures, (got video's of our Previously disadvantaged dog that we rescued, and the wild cat that we adopted displaying exactly this), but when it comes to eating the colour and taste takes over big time, with shape and size following almost as close as a siamese twin (or as close as crap, Sorry I Meant CARP, is to being a swearword) with texture coming in last, oh and action/behaviour is also part of the almost siamese twins actually it should be called the siamese triplets.