North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Did something on fluro colours on here a few years ago.

Have refined the thinking that underpinned that write-up.

Also some new people on now who may be still trying to work fluro out.

Cheers Ronje. Yep the 100mm white squidgie is a ripper!

Sure is and that's simply because its white.

Its actually ANY white lure not just a squidgie (and there's a reason for that).

Make it fluro and its brighter meaning its even more easily seen.

Nobody that I know of has experimented with fluro and "pretend UV" (torches) to find out why. Once they do, its "blindingly" obvious.

Here's a little trick by one well known lure manufacturer involving fluro/uv lures. They're not the only ones who do it.

First image is straight out of the box and the "UV Bright" sticker is pasted onto the box.
Second image is the same lure under a UV torch.
The lure on the top ( same manufacturer) is one I repainted with fluro paint and the lure on the bottom is genuine fluro one pretty close to white.

Which one is NOT a "standout" fluro lure underwater (one doesn't have to be Einstein to work it out)?

If u want to separate real fluro lures from those like the centre one above, get urself a "UV" torch and "flash" any fluro lure that u're thinking of buying.

Always thought the white and really light pink soft plastics were good barra lures.

White is best alround colour for any water where visbility allows. Light pink (which has a "red" base"colour) is more visible as water gets a bit dirtier.

I successfully use a lure with with fluro red/fluro green for water that's murkier. Should sound familar to a lot of lure users.
A single cour thats ok for water halway between dirty and clearer is called chartreuse. Good for impoundments in Qld and the varying clarity in run off times (like the NT).

Trouble is that u can't get fluro chartreuse (which is pretty bright anyway) to respray a lure.

So I use a 2 colour combination of fluro red (for murky water) and fluro green (for clearer water).

Why should that combination sound familar? Red and green? Reverse the words to green and red and u have G&R....Guns & Roses.

Who makes G & R lures? Classic and advertise it as an "all rounder". Now u know why.

And two G&R all rounders with a Classic and a Rob Gaden Warlock.



My paint scheme for G&R?
One half area of the lure for dirty water (red) and the other half for cleaner water (green). Also a good all rounder.

May as well have the different types of water clarity that u're likely to come across and which colour combos penetrate each type better than other colour combos..

Only 3 general types oceanic, headland/impoundment and run-off. Rememember some of the run-off waters can have clarity like impoundment/headlands while some run-off is as dirty as.

Pick the one/s that penetrate each type best for the water type that you generally fish in.
Important.

The oft quoted but confidently wrong assertion that red fades first is true only for clear water (like oceanic).

In any other types of water the fading sequence is different. Look carefully at the above diagram.

In dirty/estuary/murky water, blue and green fade first and red penetrates further than any of the other colours.

I mentioned earlier about a contest between 2 largemouth bass fishermen in the USA to see which soft plastic colour on the same type of lure worked better.... yellow or white.

LMB in the USA are colourblind to blue. These guys didn't know that and neither do 99% of US bass fishermen including the "experts".

White has a blue component in its mix which LMB can't see. It can only see the red and green components. So a LMB sees a white lure as yellow ( a mix in equal parts of red and green).

So (in reality) the contest was between which yellow lure the LMB liked best. Fred's or Ted's?

The likely outcome was obvious to me before the first cast and that's the way it turned out.

The conclusion by the guys fishing was that it was a draw.

Why am I telling you this about the USA and largemouth bass?

LMB have evolved over thousands of years in water (lakes freshwater) so never developed a blue colour eye receptor needed for water of exceptional clarity (like that needed for clear oceanic water).

Is that any different to fish in Aus waters in freshwater? Do they have the same colour blindness to blue? I don't see why not although I'm not aware of any research that's been carried out in Aus about that.

Research has been carried out on barramundi vision by asian scientists where barramundi farming is extensive.

Barramundi have red, green and blue colour receptors just like humans. No colour blindness.

I often wonder about tales of best colour lures for silver perch, Aus bass, yellowbelly and murray cod. I suspect that all of these species are also colour blind to blue for the same reason as US largemouth bass. Nature and evolution don't stop at country borders.

The attached is what happens to colours if a fish is colourblind to blue. I've put up 10 only but there are another 46 that are affected. You'll see why white and yellow got the same result in that contest.
Here's a link to a US bass fishing site that I was dealing with about that subject a few years ago.

https://www.westernbass.com/forum/post6 ... ml#p654494

And here's the link to research about bass being colourblind to blue by Dr Lisa Mitchem and team from the University of Virginia in 2018.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... mouth_bass