Lure Colour
Thoughts on the relevance of patterns and colours on lures.
Look through any lure catalogue and your eyes will be assaulted by a vast range of colours and patterns. Two questions immediately spring to mind: which ones are best, and do I need them all?
These are easy questions with difficult answers. I recommend that you try to think of better questions. First: what do these colours look like underwater and in different conditions? Then: what do pike like?
My three "essential" colour patterns:
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Natural roach/shad or silver
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Dark or black
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Firetiger
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But there are still plenty of plugs I use regularly that are neither of these. My next line of attack are Flame Orange Tiger or white. I catch very few pike on perch patterns, although many lure anglers would rate them very highly. Other lure anglers might add: yellow, purple, blue/silver, flo pink, pike, gold/orange, or others. If you have a successful day with an unusual colour or pattern you will have confidence in it, use it more often and therefore catch more fish with it, thus vindicating your choice. If it works for you, stick with it. Lately I am developing a liking for bright orange/red undersides with all patterns. I noticed that most times I had a decent fish the plug had a flame red belly so I am giving more plugs a red underside to see if it improves results at all. One noticeable feature of even quite bright reds is that they present a strong and dark silhouette when viewed against light but still show up brightly against a duller background, combining the best of both worlds, perhaps.
Some lure anglers are convinced of the merits of small painted details on plugs, such as eyes, gill slits, red throat patches etc. If you want to paint a particular detail onto a plug then make it big enough to be seen from a couple of yards away in bad light, if such details are to make a difference at least let the fish see them. Eyes should be big enough to make the front of the plug easily defineable, and like all markings, should offer a strong contrast to the background.
I recommend that you play around with a few different colours at home in controlled conditions, looking at the same patterns against different backgrounds with varying light intensity and direction, as well as from varying distances, you might learn something to your advantage. The most startling discovery that I have made is that there is only one colour that remains constant against all backgrounds and in all lights - black!
According to scientific data, pike have colour vision that is fairly similar to our own, so it is reasonable to assume that the colours we can see are the same as the colors that the pike can see. But, the conditions under which we see a lure are markedly different from those that the pike endure.
Consider the lure catalogue, in order to produce an attractive and detailed picture the plug is well-lit and photographed from the side, not remotely as a pike would usually see it. Pick the lure up from your box and you will hold it still, with the light just right, at a comfortable seeing distance, to admire it.
Now consider it from the pike's point of view. The lure will usually be moving, for a start, and a little distance away, preventing a clear consideration of the details of its colour or pattern. Suspended matter in the water both reduces the acuity of the pike's eyesight and filters out certain colour wavelengths, so some colours will not be visible. The angle that the pike sees the plug from in relation to the angle of sunlight will have a profound effect on the perceived colours, the most obvious manifestation of this is a lure appearing merely as a dark silhouette against a bright sky.
Considering this a little further though and you might come up with an interesting thought, a retrieved lure may appear several different colours at different parts of the retrieve to pike in different positions.
Simply whether the pike is looking into the sun at the lure or has the light behind it will make a dramatic difference to its appearance, even a fire tiger pattern appears dull and dark with the sun behind it. As the lure nears the bank it will appear different again against the green of the bankside vegetation or the shade of trees. You immediately begin to see the permutations are almost endless on any one cast, and in the course of a day, in different swims and changing light conditions, this becomes an incomprehensible jumble of possibilities.
So if a certain pattern has been successful on a given day there is no way that you could know whether all the pike actually saw, or selected, the same colours. So it naturally follows that you could not make a judgement on the pike's preferences.
I realise that this does not help in making an intelligent choice about lure pattern, but it should at least free you from getting too tied down to trying to relate conditions to colours. The colour of the lure is usually the least important of all the variables that affect your success, try different colours to find out what is working for you on the day, but don't try to read too much into your results or make any rash predictions about what colour or pattern will work best in any given conditions.
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