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Spinnerbait Color Selection

Click here for a Printable Version of the Secret Weapon Color Chart.

How & Why to Choose Lure Colors

Most of today’s fishing lures from major manufacturers could almost be called beautiful. While every manufacturer wants their lures to be visually exciting to anglers, the goal of legitimate designers is for each lure’s appearance to perform a specific and consistent purpose. There are three reasons a lure designer produces a certain color pattern:

1. To increase or suppress visibility. To achieve maximum contrast for low-light conditions, as at night or in heavily-stained or muddy water, or heavily overcast conditions, a designer may create high-contrast patterns. Night baits are typically black or very dark colors in create a strong contrast against the night sky or star-lit bottom. Examples of high-contrast baits are #215 Firetiger Perch, #228 Moonlight Snack, and #302 Midnight Snack.
   
   Our famous #302 Midnight Snack is a color pattern acclaimed by jig fisherman who flip and pitch for big bass: mainly black with a little blue. That spinnerbait pattern was conceived for night angling, but it has proven to be a first-rate fish-getter night or day, in stained and clear water. Our Midnight Snack “Buzzrbait!” is becoming famous for the lunker bass it produces, too.
   
   On the other hand, gin-clear water under bluebird skies call for subtlety or stealth so as to not alarm the fish. Translucent skirts and light-colored baits like #109 Blue Herring are ideal for those conditions. Other good candidates are #115 Baby Bass, #117 Bleeding Minnow, and #129 Citrus Shad.
   
   Some lures, such as Secret Weapon’s #212 Green Sunfish, were designed to provide the maximum visibility in the widest range of depths and water clarities. My reference sources when designing this lure were strictly scientific tables and books. The lure is effective in water anywhere between crystal clear and heavily stained, whether fished on the surface or down to thirty feet.
   
   
2. To “match the hatch.” Secret Weapon excels in this. “match the hatch.” means to duplicate the appearance of locally abundant prey as closely as possible or to create a lure that visibly matches what the target species feeds on, either usually or at just that specific time. Our #115 Baby Bass looks a baby bass —a favorite for muskellunge, northern pike, and cannibalistic black bass. The #117 Bleeding Minnow (the first of many “bleeding” types of bait on the market today) resembles a wounded shad or other baitfish.
   
   Our #232 Tennessee Shad is what Florida anglers reach for when fishing for bass feeding on gold shiners. Our #234 Bluegill is a dead ringer for a male pumpkinseed sunfish at the peak of its breeding color.
   
   Anglers in northern states will recognize that the Yellow Perch was the inspiration for our #214 Firetiger Perch, and bass everywhere fall for the #202 Golden Shad that so closely mimics carp fry.
   
   Shades of brown or gray are often used on bottom-crawling baits to induce bottom-feeding bass to strike at the movement. Our #220 Rock Craw is a “natural”.in that its skirt resembles the coloration of many crawfish species. To enhance its visibility to predators, the upper half of the tip of the tail has been made orange, again a normal crawfish color but used more liberally by us than by nature. Since red light doesn’t penetrate very far into water, at depths below ten feet the orange appears gray and the affect diminishes, but in shallow water and near the surface the lure is deadly.
   
   
3. To offer something different from normal prey. Here is where designing really becomes fun! A growing school of thought among bass fishermen suggests that matching the hatch isn’t always the best policy. Sometimes, it’s better for your offering to be totally different.
   
   Fish don’t always react favorably patterns that human logic might dictate. One of the reasons fishing remains so fun is that we cannot “think” like a fish. When we try, often we out-smart ourselves. For example, the Chartreuse & White pattern (our #210) has been and is today the number one selling pattern for all manufacturers’.spinnerbaits. But tell me... just what fish is colored chartreuse and white? Have you ever caught one or seen one swim by? Probably not, but you know the color pattern produces, and somebody must have thought it up first!
   
   Purple skirts catch fish, and no fish responds better to purple spinnerbaits than large bass that lurk around lighted and boat docks at night. One of our Prostaff members prowls such areas by moonlight most of the year in search of trophy bass, and he lobbied determinedly and successfully for the #228 Moonlight Snack, a color pattern that has been producing lunkers since its inception by SWL. But have you ever seined a purple minnow?

Bob Rickard -----------------------<=-    0´)))><
May 14, 2006