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Red: A 50-year test report
I am 64 years old, and was first taken fishing by my dad on Tar Blue Creek in SE Missouri when I was only 4 years old. I still believe that creek was the only muddy creek in the entire state. We caught bluegill until I could no longer hold that little cane pole, and a life-long love of fishing was born.
By age 10, most of my fishing was on Flat River creek and the Big River, both crystal clear at that time. Dad had me on a fly rod by then, using live grasshoppers, small craws, black gnats and other flies, mostly red. We really caught a lot of fish... bass, bluegill, goggle-eye, and Lord knows what else.
A few years later I was wading those and other crystal clear streams with that fly rod, and by then also using a 5’ steel casting rod, silk line (I think), and a Pfleuger Akron baitcasting reel. I owned 2 “plugs": a Fred Arbogast Jitterbug and a South Bend Bass-O-Reno. Both were 5/8-oz. lures with red heads & white bodies, which was the most popular color pattern of the time. Even in water so clear that it was almost invisible, that red would draw strikes.
As time went on, the selection of color patterns in fishing lures grew faster than the national debt. All those colors seemed to catch fish somewhere, but few really survived the close scrutiny posed by those clear Ozark streams. Like most non-thinking, follow-the-leader humans in a world where style was more important than brains, I found my catch rate sinking fast.
On one trip in the 70’s, where valuable fishing time was being squeezed to a bare minimum by the demands of my job, I was getting skunked on the upper Gasconade river in SW Missouri. The Gasconade is, IMHO, one of the most beautiful streams in the world. The only thing that has kept it pristine is the fact it flows through both Fort Leonard Wood and the Mark Twain National Forest. Completely undeveloped, it is a wild, unspoiled river than can be absolutely miserable to navigate.
That’s how it was that beautiful day in September. A dry summer has the river so low that we had to drag that loaded 18’ Jon boat over rocks more than we got to paddle. The fish were easily visible, with almost all bunched in numerous gravel bottom potholes. We fished every lure we had, with the same results. They would rush our lures the second they splashed in the water. They would nose them for a few seconds and then swim away with a total lack of interest.
Even I was losing interest, and was beginning to focus all my attention on the case of beer we had on ice, and being grateful that my supplies would keep the day from being a total loss. It was still a little before noon, but I had declared the drinking lamp lit and was reaching for a cold one when I heard my buddy Jack shouting from behind me: “Big one on!”
I dropped the lid of the cooler and spun around to behold a beautiful sight; Jack was tied on to what proved to be a fat 4-pound smallmouth bass. Our first of the day.
“What did he hit?” I shouted.
I first have to tell you about Jack. Jack loves Rapalas more than anyone,and what he loves most is a #7 Rapala standard floating minnow in silver with black back. In fact, he loves them so much that on the Gasconade, which we fished together every fall for over 30 years, he never used anything else. Nothing! I would experiment all day changing lures, depths, retrieves, and more than everything else. Jack would simply cast his same Rapala as close to cover as possible, wait, twitch, wait, twitch, then a steady retrieve at a medium speed. On a really good day, my catch might equal his. Frustrating!
Now, a major fishing secret is revealed.
Anyway, as he released that smallie (neither of us ate fish), he showed me that he had cut a piece of fabric out of his favorite red T-shirt. He actually experimented with something, and scored big time! He had cut it to about 1/8” wide & 1-1/2” long, and stuck it on the front treble of his little Rapala. It not only drew that strike, but drew strikes from many species the rest of the day. I was fishing a fat little Texas rigged, hand-poured 4” worm-colored, straight-tailed plastic worm. I pulled the point out of the worm, put about a 3” piece of the same width red cloth on the hook, and replaced the point into the worm, and Bingo! Fish on! It worked.
After that day, 1/8” wide red cloth in various lengths became a mandatory part of my tackle. It didn’t always make a big difference, but at times really saved a slow day. I never found it to hurt anything. Oddly enough, I never found that simply painting some red onto my lures made much difference. The red needed to have some kind of action of it’s own, such as the rippling & flexing of the cloth strip (which is much more durable than a simple piece of red worn, or whatever.) I would hang it on the front hooks of topweaters, crankbaits, etc. and on a spinnerbait hook. I also used it on jigs and soft plastics, both Texas rigged and open hook.
When I started sending out evaluation samples of our Secret Weapon spinnerbaits back in 2000, one of the first models was our “Bleeding Minnow,” with a shad colored skirt containing a few strands of red. It was far ahead of it’s time, and was an instant success (and still is). Now the “Red Revolution” is in full swing, resulting in some lure manufacturers presenting entire lure model series with some kind of red application. We at Secret Weapon will NOT be coming out with a “Red” series. Instead, we have a much more simple, cost effective and fish producing solution: we are offering small red blades to be used in the front of our spinnerbaits in tandem configurations. This is a cheap, quick, easy and absolutely the best way to modify a spinnerbait with just the right amount of active red. I can’t keep them in stock. Those who use first generation spinnerbaits can change the front blades of some of your lures to achieve a similar affect.
Bob Rickard, a.k.a., “Dr. Spinnerbait”
Secret Weapon Lures Inventor
January 28, 2005
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