To hear the scientists speak on the subject, a pink worm with a blue blood line is an awful color choice. The color sensitive cones in the eye of the bass, it has been determined by people a lot smarter than me, just don’t discern these soft shades as well as some other colors.

One problem with such “science,” though is it just doesn’t account for Robo’s sale of Morning Dawn worms, (er pink with a blue blood line.) And worse than that, the science seems embarrassingly obtuse when your partner is kicking your behind with that dang pink worm.

I don’t discount the research.

In fact, I read every word. But there is something patently skewed about their findings in the lab and my 40 years on the water. And in fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say, the most prominent fish researchers in the world have never fished where I fish—or they would be a lot more careful with their conclusions.

Still, my tackle box is full of green (scientifically approved) worms in every shade and there’s some red in there as well. But what’s missing, compared to the “old days” is much in the way of blue—at least as the primary body color.

Just like former lure manufacturer Al Kalin mentioned in his comments about this website, he once sent me enough blue worms to last through the Millennium. Fact is they’ll probably last even longer—especially since I don’t throw them much anymore. And yet, in the infancy of the bass game, blue was the first choice of the legendary Bill Dance.

In the progression of the market’s popular colors, modern science would seem to discount the use of “electric blue,” that purple with blue flake combo that hit the bass fishing scene in the early 1980’s—but still gets ‘em. Purple and blue don’t test well in the laboratory (but that facility, apparently, is not located anywhere near the brush lines and stained water I’ve been fishing for the last 25 years).

Of course, color is just one piece of the vision issue, but I have to congratulate myself that I have been so accurate in my attendant choices of size, shape, texture and motion, along with the color purple. Or maybe it’s just that I have no fear of failure when I rig one up.

But while I have laid down the blue in the last decade or so, black grape, that deep blue/purple I first saw in the Mann’s Jelly Worms of the 1970’s is rarely found these days. You get combos, such as June Bug (black grape with visible green flake?) or Margarita Mutilator (grape, neon blue over brown?) or what’s that Folkestad Special (more of the same with red flake)– but not much else.

Said Greg Stump of RoboWorm, “It (black grape) is one of my pet colors–but I can’t sell it.”

Certainly, as a hand poured color, it’s really fallen from favor. And still, black grape is one of the key colors these days in Lake Elsinore, Southern California’s only natural lake. (And I’d be happy to take the scientists out there and show ‘em.)

Yet, whether fish see one color better than another, or whether the bass fishermen choose to use one or not—you just can’t argue—color matters.

(So what’s your favorite? Let us know.)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Features, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Lure color: Of course it matters!”