Plug Colors Part II

[Back Beach]

Black/white/yellow is all you need. That bascially sumrises what everyone said. A few minor deviations/combinations, but those basic three won't hurt you, ever.

[JoeP]

I still think natural colors are the best bet. Not saying the basic time-tested white/black/yellow don't work fine. But, why not increase the odds a bit more and use plugs that actually look like real bait.

Put it this way, it's a pretty good bet that live eels, live pogies, live herring, a few sandeels on a hood (Cape Cod), etc. will work better than a plug 99% of the time. So why not use plugs that look the most like eels, pogies, herring, sandeels, mullet, etc.

Plus, they look nicer...

[Rockport24]

Canalman, if you keep making plugs like that spook that I got from you at MSBA, I'll buy them in any damn color.
by the way, the little weight thing at the bottom of my plug fell out (smashed it against the rocks too many times).

[Ed B]

Some of the best and most extensive writeups of these topics I've seen comes from research done for the freshwater bass guys. Can't blame them, that's where the money is and it's their nationwide target audience. Oftentimes some of their findings with freshwater stripers as well as other gamefish are included as well.

A really great book in addition to Ross's is "Knowing Bass"
by Dr Keith Jones. Jones is a research biologist for Berkley and has spent much of his life testing and studying gamefish. He has done significant study of colors and coloration patterns. Berkley Corp clearly states up front that Dr Jones had free reign to publish scientific findings of his testing at Berkley without interference from Berkley to remove any impression that the company might be trying to sell extra fishing tackle. A fascinating read at least to me anyway.

Jones did find that fish had preference to certain colors and a two tone pattern. But if you fish at night when fish probably can't distinguish color, it probably won't matter a whole heck of a lot. At least not to the fish anyway.

Ed

[chuckg]

Old time surf rats swore by three colors. White, light blue and black, why all the confusion? If these fish were so wary you wouldn't see 30-40 lb fish being caught on white topwater plugs, their brains are the size of your little finger's nail...

[eelman]

Originally Posted by chuckg

Old time surf rats swore by three colors. White, light blue and black, why all the confusion? If these fish were so wary you wouldn't see 30-40 lb fish being caught on white topwater plugs, their brains are the size of your little finger's nail...

exactly.......

[chris L]

how about clear ? let the surrounding make the color . Im not sure color matters since fish feed from below but I like the colors . I see sounds and hear colors . and voices , voices I hear voices and I dont want to do what they are telling me . I will have to ignore Igor cause he wants me to do bad things

[BigFish]

Most plugs have white bellies and that is all they see in my opinion! The action and the bottom of the plug! Like Flap says....at night just a silhouette!

[tlapinski]

Originally Posted by BigFish

Most plugs have white bellies and that is all they see in my opinion! The action and the bottom of the plug! Like Flap says....at night just a silhouette!

Look at a plug from below in the water and you'll see this is not completely true. Fisheye made a post a while back, and I stumbled on to the same thing a few years back while snorkeling. Bigfish, use the search feature...

[tattoobob]

Everyone is missing the most important color there is to fishing, that is brown/white, ask any old timer about brown and white plugs.