Barra and colors.

[BR65]

Something I scratch me head about Deano.
I, like most I reckon, have got my go to colors when its tuff on the water.

Question is, do the colors attract the fish, does the fact that I have that color in the water more than others attract the fish, does the confidence I have in that colour translate into a differant retrieve, more concentration and more fish?

Im really interested in vibration and sonic signatures. So many lures come with rattles, we stick rattles up the bum of soft placs, but some brands of timber lures sans rattles are extremly effective.
Why?
A bait fish doesnt rattle as it swims along, but does a rattle raise the initial interest, and brings in a fish that is out of the casting line?

[Dick Pasfield]

otherwise our tackle boxes would all be full of plain white lures unpainted

Some are, well nearly






I put colour behind most other facets in the selection criteria. Contrast on the other hand sits much higher, especially for night fishing. Hence having a few white painted lures with a black contrast stripe. They catch fish, not every time bout often enough to have a few different types up my sleeve.

Poor old battered scorp in the top pic was a bleeding mullet colour, not much blood left in it now 'cept for a few texta stripes. It's creaming fish of a night at the moment.

[NAGG]

Something I scratch me head about Deano.
I, like most I reckon, have got my go to colors when its tuff on the water.

Question is, do the colors attract the fish, does the fact that I have that color in the water more than others attract the fish, does the confidence I have in that colour translate into a differant retrieve, more concentration and more fish?

Im really interested in vibration and sonic signatures. So many lures come with rattles, we stick rattles up the bum of soft placs, but some brands of timber lures sans rattles are extremly effective.
Why?
A bait fish doesnt rattle as it swims along, but does a rattle raise the initial interest, and brings in a fish that is out of the casting line?

And then we have the times / situation where the last thing that we want is a big rattle ( fishing shallows in winter) - or is sheltered & undisturbed with fish sunning themselves. or those early mornings predawn around the weed edges ...... subtle presentations

Chris

[Big_Ren]

Dick, I believe the Scorps actually come in that white/black striped arrangement these days. You may have been the pre-cursor to this occurring. Yours looks better in any case....but then again, I am not a barra

Cheers
Paul

[Jeremy87]

From a statistical stand point it is very difficult to conclude in impoundment barra fishing whether one colour will outfish another. A question i draw to frequently to customers when discussing colour is that on a cast that produces a fish if they think that if they put the same cast in with a different colour there would have been a different result, the only fair test of choice. Unforetunately due to the constraints of the space time continuum you can't actually do that. The next best thing would be to have two fishermen fishing side by side making parallel casts using the same gear and possessing the same fishing competency with the only difference being lure colour and then repeat on a large scale. Considering the fluididy to retrieves and casts this would be hard to simulate. Even if this could be achieved you still need to take into consideration clustering, clustering is where an event is repeated disproportionately to the expect outcome over a short time or space. For example when tossing a coin you can either draw heads or tails. but you would not expect to flip heads and then tails and then heads again in continuous sequence. instead you might flip 4 or 5 heads before you draw a tail and this would be completely normal. Clustering can occur anywhere there is a chance event (which is pretty much anywhere). So in fishing which has a high aspect of chance ie to which cast is going to encounter a fish, clustering should be relatively common.

So the reason i am harping on about statistics, because how many impoundment barra do you normally catch a day? Probably not enough to counter for clustering. Since lure colour is relevant to more than just barra i will draw examples from other fish species. Species like bass and bream can be caught in high quantities, and yet in these species it is extremely infrequent that i encounter a situation (where anglers where of even skill and fish where being caught in numbers high enough to counter for clustering) where i can honestly say colour was the determining factor. I can only truely think of two examples. The first was recently at borumba we encountered a large number of small bass. They were being caught by everyone but the stand out lure was a fluoro green manns +5. In this situation i would conclude that the fish were hitting any hard body with equal tenacity, but the additional visibility giving by the fluoro green lure was enough to increase the strike rate. Interestingly no large bass where caught on this lure while other lures producing fewer small fish did the damage. The other example is when fishing for squire in the bay i have encountered stand out lure colours, usually the ones that closely simulate the bait they are feeding on. The likes of nuke chook etc are effective colours but i cannot think of a situation while catching on nuke chooks that fish weren't also hitting other colours with equal tenacity.

So anyway I am not disputing that colour plays some role in making a fish hit a lure. But it is something i only worry about once I've sorted out the 100 other variables that might be influencing my catch rate.

[vet]

Hi Jeremy, the next best thing to do isn't having 2 people cast parallel as each angler imparts differing actions on lure and this may have effect on catch rate. The best way to compare is undoubtly trolling different coloured lures in the rod holder at the same distance back on the same outfits, troll up the bank 1 way and then back again the opposite way so that each lure has it's chance closest to the weed beds or whatever feature you are trolling.

I went trolling last night for the first time in ages and amazingly enough 1 coloured lure got the majority of attention. 1 coloured xrap 12cm landed 6 fish and a soft plastic boney bream got the only other bite for the night. This 1 lure colour had all the bites and outfished 2 other rods 6 to 1 with me using every other coloured xrap 12cm on the other 2 rods for no bites. Also cycled through scorpions, classics, jointed xraps all to no avail. Maybe 6 to 1 isn't enough for statistics and clustering but I know which outcome I prefer better. This was obviously a quiet night but my statistics show that normally 1 colour on a particular night will usually outfish all other colours by a factor of 5-6 to 1, even when you get 30 fish in a night. You are definitely right about needing a reasonable number of fish to be caught every night to work out a pattern. That seems to be the hard part and why most people don't believe colour doesn't work.

cheers, scott.

[vet]

Hi Dick, I probably should have picked black as my random colour choice, since black is the absence of colour it is probably a better choice for people that don't believe colour makes a difference. I also don't rate colour as my number 1 priority with lure selection, but I don't disregard it either.
cheer, Scott.

Ps My tackle box has the occasional white lure thrown in as well. In fact a certain white scorpion of mine pulled 120 barra in a month compared to 10 caught on other colours in the same month. Once again trolling with 1 colour Ie white, dominating the catch for a month over whatever was put on the other 2 rods.

[birko]

I fish three outfits with the same line, leader and plastic brand, size,shape and weight . Same reel and rod. The only difference is colour of the plastic used. Have hit a few bites recently where plastic one is a hit a cast, plastic two does not get a touch, plastic 3 is a hit a cast.

Yeh, I used to rubish colour favorites but now I think it plays a part.


Please dont blackmail me anyone. I was never at a Mondy M&G.


Birko

[Dick Pasfield]

Ps My tackle box has the occasional white lure thrown in as well. In fact a certain white scorpion of mine pulled 120 barra in a month compared to 10 caught on other colours in the same month. Once again trolling with 1 colour Ie white, dominating the catch for a month over whatever was put on the other 2 rods.

Ah yes, flavours of the month, sometimes you can pick them sometimes not. Funny how far over a waterway their influence extends when they hit their straps.

Tie them on, let them swim around a bit and they bring you back a fish.

[Jeremy87]

I went trolling last night for the first time in ages and amazingly enough 1 coloured lure got the majority of attention. 1 coloured xrap 12cm landed 6 fish and a soft plastic boney bream got the only other bite for the night. This 1 lure colour had all the bites and outfished 2 other rods 6 to 1 with me using every other coloured xrap 12cm on the other 2 rods for no bites.

6 to 1 is pretty good numbers. I'm more referring to the guys who catch 2 or 3 fish and then claim that is was all to do with the colour. But even with a 6:1 ratio there are still factors to be taken into consideration. For example do you find the same patterns hold from trip to trip or are they fluid, if they change do the relate to other factors (weather, bait etc). How frequently do you catch good numbers of fish and no colour pattern emerges. Another consideration is fishing effort. Assumably the lure catching fish spent most of the night swimming suggesting it was given considerably more fishing effort than other lures. Finally is there actually enough light for the fish to differentiate between colours. If from your experience you can say that yes colour patterns are repeatable, yes colour patterns always emerge when catching large numbers of fish, yes i give unbiased fishing effort and yes it is physically possible for the fish to identify colour then with a 6 to 1 ratio it is almost a certainty that colour has a profound influence. I have never caught 30 impoundment barra in one session on the troll. I have however caught those numbers (and more) of bass in one session on the troll and have never found a colour pattern to emerge, only depth, speed and rod work. I can't draw myself to believe that bass and barra are so different in their habits that patterns would emerge in one but not the other.

That seems to be the hard part and why most people don't believe colour doesn't work.

Double negative, i'm assuming you mean most people think colour doesn't work?

It is exactly my arguement, that if you are not going to catch enough fish to establish a colour pattern then focus on other basics that will probably have a more profound influence, ie factors that actually get the lure infront of the fish so it can choose to eat it or not. Once you have picked up a few fish then start to worry about the finer variables.

[vet]

Hello Jeremy, Yes most people think colour doesn't matter because they don't catch large enough numbers consistently to notice patterns emerge. Also most people cast so they will never know what could have been if they used another colour because they can't have 3 different colours going simultaneously. As I've said before you have to get everything else right before colour matters because if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time it won't matter what lure you throw.
Cheers scott.

[A_DIFF_PERSPECTIVE]

The test is too tough to prove. Any time I ever thought colour may have been the helping I factor, I found new fundamentals that mattered. Ie, lure tuning, lure choice, lure size, and most importantly- technique bla bla bla. I try to accept it may help at times, but I still fail to see any examples in my fishing, strongly alive and kicking. No two same make/model lures can ever be compared, some I discard, others I treat like gold.
And yes, there are documents out that say they can see colour.
The day I can't catch barra amongst others that are- might be a day that I look deeper within, but we basically do it everyday, and colour choice is not even on the list of criteria.
If colour gives you confidence, fish with it.
ABT barra gurus ranked 1 and 2 don't rate colour in their hit list either.
Plenty do rate colour high on the agenda, yet these guys aren't on the top of that list either.
Just my thoughts.
Cheers.

[A_DIFF_PERSPECTIVE]

ABT barra gurus ranked 1 and 2 don't rate colour in their hit list either.
Plenty do rate colour high on the agenda, yet these guys aren't on the top of that list either.
Just my thoughts.
Cheers.

The above lines were to highlight that 'other principles' are more beneficial than colour choice.

[Dicko]

Some are, well nearly

Looks like most of my lures lol.

I found a few scorpions in a patch of trees down at faust a few years ago when the water was low. They had a dried layer of crusty mud on them. So being the bright lad that I am, I decided that scrubbing them with a brush was too much effort so I put them in the cutlery tray of the dishwasher when I did the next load after I got home.

They all ended up stripped naked.

So here's a tip: If you like pretty coloured lures, don't put them in the dishwasher, well not on a steaming hot cycle anyway.

They still got regular use along with a bunch of other naked lures in the tackle box.

[darylive]

The test is too tough to prove. Any time I ever thought colour may have been the helping I factor, I found new fundamentals that mattered. Ie, lure tuning, lure choice, lure size, and most importantly- technique bla bla bla. I try to accept it may help at times, but I still fail to see any examples in my fishing, strongly alive and kicking. No two same make/model lures can ever be compared, some I discard, others I treat like gold.
And yes, there are documents out that say they can see colour.
The day I can't catch barra amongst others that are- might be a day that I look deeper within, but we basically do it everyday, and colour choice is not even on the list of criteria.
If colour gives you confidence, fish with it.
ABT barra gurus ranked 1 and 2 don't rate colour in their hit list either.
Plenty do rate colour high on the agenda, yet these guys aren't on the top of that list either.
Just my thoughts.
Cheers.

Johnny, I think regardless of specific colour contrast is an issue.

i.e. the old saying dark day dark lure? etc. Regardless of colour the fish (those that can see) see a shape whether attracted by the sight or action initially. Logically a higher contrast shape in the water is a more likely target than one difficult to see. (obviously there is more to it at night but again contrast for visibility?)

So although perhaps slightly off the colour issue how do you rate contrast and another issue solid or camo pattern?

As always your contribution based on your experience is appreciated and respected.

Thanks