|
Don’t Get So Wrapped Up In Color Selection!
How many of us walk into tackle shops, discount stores, K-Marts,
Wal-Marts, etc., go straight to the sporting goods department,
look for the fishing rods sticking up in the air to zero in on
the fishing lures and plastic baits section? Then, when you get
there you start looking over all of the enormous selections of
all the different baits and different colors that are offered by
the many bait companies that are on the market today. There's so
much that you’re not really sure of exactly what is really
needed, so "The Big Question" comes to mind, especially
when looking over all the tempting soft plastic baits:
What colors do I really need? Well,
let me tell you a little secret that most anglers don’t know!
That is, you don’t really need a multitude of colors in your
arsenal. That’s right, you don’t need every color that you
see! Now, some anglers may suggest to you, "Well, my partner
and I use this certain color on this certain body of water, and
it catches a lot of bass" or others may say, "I saw
this magazine article from one of the top pros, and he said to
use this yellow, spotted, half-striped, 7", curly tail,
floating, thing-a-ma-jig plastic made by so & so, and I saw a
picture in the magazine of the 14 lb. bass he caught off of this
certain plastic bait, and now I’ve really got to have some of
these." Now before we get started, let me explain something
else to you. The bassin’ industry is a multi-billion dollar
industry in today's world - and growing more and more every day.
Most of these pros you see, hear or read about have an
obligation to their sponsors to demonstrate, promote, and to
advertise their sponsored product (Nobody gives or gets anything
for free anymore!). For example, attend one of their fishing
seminars and just see if they don’t try to sell you on a
"certain product", or the technique that they may use
with this "certain bait." There are more TV fishing and
outdoors programs, outdoor magazines, bass tournament
organizations, web sites, bass fishing clubs, lure and tackle
manufacturers, bass boat manufacturers, rod companies, reel
companies, and it goes on and on and on...far more today than
there ever was before. (After all, bass fishing is America's
number one water sport!) And ALL of these companies are in the
market to make money.
Now, let’s go even a step further, okay? What sells all of
these products? Hmm, let’s see now, advertisement (marketing)
and promotion are about the two best ways of selling a product
that I’m aware of, and I’m sure that there are more, but
first let’s concentrate on these two for just one moment. Let’s
talk about fishing shows to give you an example! I’ve co-hosted
several TV fishing shows in the past and let me tell you that
"most" of the time, (not all of the time) but
"most" of the fish that you see being caught on the
show are caught prior to the actual filming of a show. Yep! Now
you might say to yourself, "Well I saw the guy set his hook
and then reel in the bass." All I can say to you is don’t
believe everything that you see! With today’s editing
equipment, professional camera personnel, and the right camera
shots, anything is possible. So let me explain how it works:
First, you cast out the sponsored bait product (whatever bait or
baits the show is sponsored by, keeping in mind that the fish
were actually caught prior to the show, and in most cases on
totally different bait).Two, while you start your retrieve, you
rear back with your rod like you just got a strike and pretend to
set the hook (on actually nothing at all). Then the camera will
stop filming. Three, you simply reel your sponsored bait back in
to the boat, grab a fish (in the case of a bass show, a bass) out
of the livewell and place the hook of the "sponsored
product" in the fish’s mouth. Next you place the fish back
into the water (with ease, and always keeping the slack out of
your line), then you let the fish swim away from the boat. At
this time, the camera starts rolling again and starts filming you
fighting the fish back to the boat! Really quite simple! That’s
how "most" of the filming is done.
It’s not so much the bait, or color, or technique used to
catch the bass during the filming. They just want to
demonstrate to you how many bass all of these "certain
baits" can actually catch! That’s called marketing.
Or take a look at the packages of most of the baits today.
They have to look appealing on the shelves to the consumer. That
shelf appeal is called packaging. Just keep this in mind - most
baits on the market today are made and packaged to catch anglers
first and fish second.
Now, I’m telling you this because of all the different
products and especially all the multitude of COLORS that you must
decide on which ones to buy. First of all I want you to
understand that I am NOT saying that a certain color of a plastic
bait will or will not work under any different circumstances, but
I will say that you don’t really need any more than
approximately two dozen colors of plastics at the most to catch
bass on any body of water throughout the United States. Now stop
and think a minute! There are, without exaggeration, on today’s
market thousands of colors and combinations of colors when it
comes to plastic baits. Remember what I just said - you can use
only two dozen colors, and not hundreds of different colors!
Whew! What a money saver, right? And, if you usually fish deeper
than 20’ depths most of the time, you don’t even need to have
that many colors. The reason is because the deeper a colored bait
drops through the water it starts to loose the color of the bait
itself. That’s right, the deeper it goes down into the water.
the color spectrum starts to diminish. In other words, if you had
a multi-colored plastic worm and you cast it out letting it drop
to a 25’ depth, the colors of that multi-colored plastic worm
would be "shades of grays and blacks" in that depth of
water.
Just like scuba diving, when you get down to a certain depth
everything looks black and gray. The same goes for colored
plastics. Now, how many colors does an angler actually need when
fishing these deeper patterns? It doesn’t matter what color you
throw into 20’ plus depths because "all colors" will
basically all look the same on the bottom. The only difference
now will be simple shade variations.
So, why buy hundreds of different colors of plastic baits when
they will all loose their color at deeper depths? Makes no sense
to me! So there is a lesson to learned, which is that the most
important factor to keep in mind when fishing with plastics is
"presentation" of the bait. That's what really counts,
and not so much the color! Until next time! Take Care & God
Bless!
"The Bass Coach".... Roger Lee Brown
|
