I'm a bit curious about a specific color of bait I have had a decent day with. The bait is a Rapala DT 6 in the brown craw color, brown colr with an orange belly.While moving to another location, I let out s little line behind the boat and trolled this crank. I ended up hooking up with a decent Bass.

In one area I was casting this bait that day, they were tearing it up.I've seen lots of companies thst make craw volored baits with orange bellies, both in hard and soft plastics(Yum Craw Papi and the Crawbug come to mind)

I really believe the fish key in on the orange portion of the bait, and that's why my day was so successful.

What is it about that orange underbelly on a craw? Does it really exist? I've never seen anything like it in my waters.I'm sold on the fact that the orange makes a difference why else would so many brown craw imitators have an orange belly?

I use a lot of orange belly colored baits up here in North Eastern Ontario, but that's because of all the perch here.

right now in early spring, anything that looks like a crawdad is gonna draw strikes, cause that is thier main food source during the winter. But as far as the orange goes, its kind of the same same thing as chartruesse; it triggers a reaction strike just because its so different.

There's gotta be something to it...there are even Baby Bass patterned baits with an orange underside...

the orange underbelly on craw baits could imitate a moulting crawfish. when they moult they have very very soft shells and thus are easy eating for bass

That's not an easy question to answer. All that I know for absolute sure is that a lure must appeal to the fish's sense. I don't believe it needs to mimic something. And as to the orange belly, that's also a mystery as far as I'm concerned since we know that there are scads of baits without orange bellies that catch numbers and size of bass.

 

There are too many variables that go into what makes a fish strike for us to have definitive answers. The best fishermen in the world don't know although some of them think they do.

 

Before someone jumps all over me for that last statement, the very best certainly know how to catch fish, but listening to their explanations it is obvious that many of them don't know why.