RoLo

Very cool! Pond-hoppers & tin-cans are the fish-catchingest machines on the water.

Noisy & Black Though I'm not one who buys into 'matching-the-hatch' (hatches are subject to change without notice), I want my lure to be seen. To that end, the color "black" is the godfather of contrast in virtually any lighting condition. If available, I'll include some 'blue' as well, which retains its hue in the deepest, murkiest water. 'Blue' would also appeal to the 'match-the-hatch' camp, as it mimics the color phase of a softshell crayfish. Roger

Absolutely, dead shad is a dynamite bait, and some might even refer to it as cheating. Your question takes me back several decades, when my wife & I vacationed at Dale Hollow to sample the bronzeback fishing. The proprietor asked me how we were doing, and I answered "very well". We came to learn that we were the only residents at the lodge doing well, and were awakened the following morning by thumping on our cabin door! As it happened, Lois & I were using a "jig & dead minnow", with minnows I caught on a small hook. Roger

My hands-down favorite is still the Shimano Core, on 'any' casting rod. Although they're not marketed anymore, they're still available online (Amazon, et al.) Now of course they're cramming the Metanium down our throat, but it's another excellent reel Roger

The older I get, the less brand loyalty I have. Nothing is carved in stone; the wise consumer will stay abreast of the ever-changing market scenario. Roger

It appears to me that your using the Keitech Impact as a surface lure, which is a great approach. FYI. You can add 1/4 oz to the Keitech swimbait and still work it essentially on the surface. The combination of a swimbait and 1/4 worm weight is very effective around waterlilies & spatterdock. Roger

================================================================ I like your attack on the subject, which you’ve given more thought than the average bear. To me at least, thinking ‘out-of-the-box’ is thinking smack in the center of the box. The big problem I have however, is descriptors like 'right color' and 'wrong color', as though their existence is a foregone conclusion (nuh-uh). On the contrary, I do not buy into that hypothesis. In keeping with your 20% preference analogy, I'd offer the following scenario: In the same lake on the same day, 80% of the anglers are throwing ‘Watermelon Red’ jelly worms, while 20% are throwing 'Black Grape' jelly worms. At the end of the day, if Black Grape accounted for 22% of the bass harvested, it outperformed Watermelon Red. Roger

True Tom, it's 'anecdotal evidence' to the second-party, but 'circumstantial evidence’ to me.

I firmly believe that once your lure has been noticed by a game fish, the importance of color falls thru the cracks. No color is going to enhance her appetite, and no color is going to take it away. To obtain valid confirmation that one color is superior to another color would require a team of studious, unbiased technicians. The individual fisherman is the last person on earth you want on that assignment The individual angler has only 'one' choice. In the midst of a scorching bite he must forget about hitting home-runs and diligently change the color of the 'same' lure. If color is indeed a compelling factor then the fishing action will immediately drop off. Okay, let’s pretend that the action does in fact drop off, no problem, now we simply return to the original color and the action should be magically restored (ahem ahem). The more times we're able to switch back-&-forth between colors and the more times we're able to curtail and restore the fishing action with color alone, the greater the credibility of our argument. I’m not just whistling Dixie here, because I've conducted this exact exercise on numerous occasions. So the next time you hear me berating the importance of color, you'll know that it wasn’t something I heard and it wasn't something I read. Roger

Endemic Shiner Roger

I see this 10-yr old thread has been resurrected My worst loss was a northern pike.......I can't remember ever losing a bass Lois & I were pike fishing out of Hawk's Nest Camp on Moon River, Georgian Bay (Lk Huron, ON) I hooked up with a fish that was clearly longer than 40" and probably a new personal best. When she jumped entirely out of the water, I turned to my wife and said: "That's a musky" During that battle she jumped 2 more times and each time I repeated: "That's a musky". After finally pumping the big serpent next to the boat, I was astonished to see the bean-shaped markings of a northern pike! Pike was our target fish, so I was ecstatic to learn that it was a trophy pike, and not a middling musky. Pike aren't as aerobatic as muskies, and this was the only gator I ever caught that leaped 'entirely' out of the water '3' times. My wife lowered the net and I deftly guided the brute to the net. As the net & pike were coming together, I noticed that the net mesh was billowed forward of the hoop but thought nothing of it. Unfortunately though, my wife did the unthinkable and lifted the net out of the lake to pull the mesh behind the hoop. During that brief net-less moment, I allowed a microsecond of slack line. My hook fell out of the pike's keyholed jaw and swung to the boat without the pike! It's hard to describe the deep gut-sickness I felt, as I watched that big beautiful log sink slowly back into her dark watery world. Roger

Nah

Among the great soft swimbaits is the Keitech Fat Impact, Basstrix Swimbait and Skinny Dipper (by a whisker). However, my hands-down favorite soft swimbait is the "Gambler Big EZ" (pure poison). Roger

I well remember A-Jay's field report on Nanofil line. Knowing the integrity with which he writes, that was enough to "keep me at bay". After reading Crestliner's review, I'm revamping that passage to "dodging the bullet" Roger

WHO is right is not important, WHAT is right is all that matters Roger

Skills and strengths are measures of our lack of weakness. Consequently, our focus should really be placed on monitoring our "weaknesses" Roger

I'm not real interested in the speculative & variable prey on this lake, but if you can provide the name of this precambrian water I might be able to provide some high percentage coordinates (cartography-dependent). Roger

I read "Jason Lucas On Bass Fishing" hot off the press, just a young kid at the time. It was the era of the "redhead", a white wooden plug with a red head (Jason's favorite water was Minnetonka, MN). Remarkably, much of what Jason wrote about lure color during the late 50s is still applicable today. That's for sure, and this is reminiscent of the Seinfield series when George Constanza said: "Jerry just remember, if you believe it...then it's not a lie" (Modern Version = "If it's on the internet, it must be true") Roger

WELL, you never did tell us which shakey head is best?

Granted, blue light is scattered by dust, ions and solid particles. But when traveling thru liquid matter alone, light penetration hinges on the wavelength of the color. Be all that as it may, biologists have yet to learn how colors, especially those in the ultraviolet spectrum, might appear in the eye of a bass. The two references below deal with 'water penetration' as it applies to different colors in the light spectrum. ==================================================================== NASA Government Education (Scroll down about a foot) https://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/education-and-outreach/additional/science-focus/ocean-color/oceanblue.shtml Why is this transparent water the bluest ocean water? There are two major optical processes by which ocean water and substances dissolved or suspended in ocean water, interact with incoming light from the Sun. The two processes are absorption and scattering. In the atmosphere, the main reason that the sky is blue is due to the scattering of light (more about this process can be found in the Science Focus! article “It’s Not Easy Being Normal”, in the section on Rayleigh scattering). In the ocean, the primary way that water interacts with light is absorption, and water absorbs different colors of the visible spectrum better than others. Water preferentially absorbs red light, and to a lesser extent, yellow and green light, so the color that is least absorbed by water is blue light. < Visit Website To View COLOR PENETRATION Diagram > This diagram shows the depth that light will penetrate in clear ocean water. Because red light is absorbed strongly, it has the shallowest penetration depth, and blue light has the deepest penetration depth. ==================================================================== NOAA (Another Interesting read from another reliable source) http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/red-color.html Roger

On balance, the closer to the surface the lure travels, the lighter the hue. On balance, the closer to the bottom the lure travels, the darker the hue. After that, I focus on stuff I believe is more important than color. Roger

The color 'red' has the longest, sloppiest light wave in the light spectrum. As a result, ‘red’ is the first color to be absorbed and scattered by air and water. By the same token, a 'red lure' soon becomes a 'black lure' when the water depth is increased or when the sun goes behind a cloud. On the opposite end of the light spectrum is "violet", the shortest, most penetrating light wave. This lends to the fact that our sky and our hydrosphere are dominated by blue hues. As a lure descends into the darkness of depth, is 'blue' the last visible color? VISIBLE TO WHO? Based on the human experience, light waves longer than ‘red’ comprise invisible light, which we call ‘infrared’. Inversely, light waves shorter than ‘violet’ are also invisible light, which humans call ‘ultraviolet’. Man has learned from creatures in the ocean’s abyss, that visible light is not the same for all living creatures. So in the final analysis, we’ve only reaffirmed the fact that man cannot see through the eyes of a fish. Roger

I'm constantly test-driving lures and deliveries in my neighbor's gin-clear swimming pool, but not while my wife is away, because she's there too testing her own lures & deliveries 'Neko' is the Japanese word for CAT, which might as well be called the "Necro rig". There really isn't too much new about 'wacky rigging' and a 'do-nothing' delivery. Roger

My "biggest problem" (typically the only problem) is not catching the desired size or number of bass

The banks of many pits mines are sheer bluffs, where a vertical delivery can be very effective. In the gin-clear phosphate pits of Mulberry, Florida, the most popular lure color is 'white'. Roger