Color ?
VOL . 37 • ISS . 21
^Hoochies and grubs are great offerings because trout and salmon love them and they are cheap allowing anglers to cover a broad range of colors without breaking the bank . Here we see both bright and baitfish colored soft plastics . Team them with a dodger and you ’ ll be yelling fish on !
Color ?
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Cal Kellogg caught this big Shasta rainbow while trolling a Silver Horde spoon in a glow watermelon pattern 60 feet deep . Did the color of the lure or the lure ’ s glow properties trigger the strike or did the trout use its lateral line to zero in on the bait ? Color is a controversial issue among anglers . Some believe color means everything . Others don ’ t put much stock in lure color .
^Many times a “ match the hatch ” approach is the way to go . This king salmon was caught in deep water at Lake Oroville , but it wasn ’ t caught on a fancy “ glow ” or brightly colored lure . Instead it smashed a simple shad colored Ex-Cel Spoon .
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At the end of the day , fishing with confidence is probably more critical than the color of the lure at the end of your line . After all trout will grab some crazy offerings . For confirmation of this look no further than the threaded and trolled worm . They aren ’ t vividly colored and when is the last time you saw a worm swimming through the water at 2 mph ?
Sept 28 - Oct 12 , 2018
Does Color Matter ?
A s you might imagine I get a lot of questions from readers about all
aspects of fishing , but one of the question that comes up regularly is the question of color . In other words , how big of a factor is lure color in terms of triggering strikes ? I ’ m convinced that the impulses collected by a fish ’ s lateral line are the most important factor in leading fish to a lure and prompting them to strike , but I ’ m far less certain about the effects of color . I ’ ve been studying how color factors into the feeding behavior of gamefish like trout , salmon , stripers and
FISH SNIFFER HOW – TO by Cal Kellogg black bass for a quite some time , but I still don ’ t have a definitive answer about the importance of lure color . There are some clues that hint to how important color MAY be in certain situations , but beyond that , the influence lure color has when it comes to triggering strikes seems to be more a matter of faith than hard science . On the scientific side of the argument , there are some concrete things that we do know . First of all , it has been demonstrated that most fish can see and distinguish between different colors . The fact is , the eyes of fish such as salmon , trout and bass work a lot like our eyes in the sense that both their eyes and our eyes have rods and cones . In light conditions the cones in our eyes pick up color . When it ’ s dark the rods in our eyes take over . Rods can ’ t discern color , so our vision is limited to light and dark areas and we are able to determine shapes . While in theory a fish ’ s eye works in the same manner as our eyes , there is one very important difference . We don ’ t live in the same environment as fish . Sunlight traveling through air behaves very differently from sunlight traveling through water in terms of the way in which it influences how the color of a given object looks . In an air environment , colors don ’ t vary
presents
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from place to place . If you look at a red fire truck on top of Mount Everest , the highest point on the earth ’ s surface , and look at the same fire truck in Death Valley , one of the lowest points on earth , the color will appear the same . Now take that same fire truck out to a lake and submerge it beneath a foot of water . It will appear to be bright red , yet if you submerge it in 50 feet of water , don your scuba gear , and dive down to it you ’ ll find that it ’ s once lustrous red paint job will appear as a dull grey . The different colors that we are able to see are a function of the color spectrum present in sunlight . When you see a rainbow , you are seeing sunlight broken down into its basic hues . These hues travel at different wavelengths . When sunlight travels through water , the various wavelengths that make up various colors begin to be absorbed by the water at different depths and as a result colors disappear and are replaced with shades of grey . Red colored lures fade first and will be a drab grey by the time they reach 25 feet , orange goes next at around the 40 foot level , yellow probably holds up down to about 65 feet , while blue or green lures maintain their color down to around 100 feet . Obviously , these color and depth facts relate more to some anglers than others . Bass guys , that spend most of their time fishing in the top 25 feet of water can use pretty much any color they want and be confident that the bass will see it . Trout and salmon trollers that routinely fish down to 100 feet or deeper need to be more aware of the way depth effects color . Clearly if you are targeting landlocked kings or kokanee suspended at 80 feet , you don ’ t want to tie on that great looking red lure since it will have long since faded to grey by the time it reaches the fish . Having said that , while I ’ m convinced that color is a factor , I ’ m not sure how big a factor color actually is . Do landlocked kings
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