Inshore Soft Plastics and Jigs

[Jighead]

[JasonGotaProblem]

Nice. From what Benni tells me, purple with a white tail is the jam.

Dave makes some strong arguments, but nuance is king. Some aspects of color in lures probably matter, some aspects probably don't. Sometimes things that don't seem to matter end up mattering in ways we don't expect because we don't understand the bigger picture.

A few leaps forward in every discipline have happened as the result of people either disregarding empirical wisdom, or not knowing enough to realize something wasn't "worth spending time on" because influential people feel that way, and end up finding something important that's been hiding under all our noses.

Nothing is truly settled. Everything is fair game for experimentation. But some experiments will be more fruitful than others.

[jurelometer]

Nice. From what Benni tells me, purple with a white tail is the jam.

Dave makes some strong arguments, but nuance is king. Some aspects of color in lures probably matter, some aspects probably don't. Sometimes things that don't seem to matter end up mattering in ways we don't expect because we don't understand the bigger picture.

A few leaps forward in every discipline have happened as the result of people either disregarding empirical wisdom, or not knowing enough to realize something wasn't "worth spending time on" because influential people feel that way, and end up finding something important that's been hiding under all our noses.

Nothing is truly settled. Everything is fair game for experimentation. But some experiments will be more fruitful than others.

I think for a lot of folk, there is also this shared cultural aspect, this common shared "knowledge".  Being part of a community of of fishers that hold these common beliefs is part of the enjoyment.  If I was a cultural anthropologist or social scientist, I would be using terms like "belief systems" and "social capital."

And it has the same ramifications.  I have experienced it myself.  Challenging the popular belief system requires expending social capital.  You become more of an outlier.  An the more insistent you are, the more capital you expend.  It is sort of like living in a village and deciding that you don't believe in the dominant religion.   Kinda weird that it extends to something as trivial as recreational fishing, but that is how we humans are wired. 

The same thing happens with cooking.  But unlike fishing, there are not too  many variables to allow you to do accurate controlled experiments.  When the scientific method is applied, it turns out that many accepted  "best practices" in cooking are  unimportant or even counterproductive. The village elders get angry, and the locals sharpen up the pitchforks.  One example:

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-nobel-physicist-explained-how-to-cook-pasta-and-now-everybodys-angry

Jighead has been pretty tolerant in this regard, so definitely not picking on him.  I am also learning from his comments on what colors are favored at what times for his fishery, which I appreciate.  Multiple perspectives is always good.


Getting back to your points about aspects of color mattering, I mostly agree. I think that color always matters, just not in the way that we think. 

If the photoreceptors in a target species do not respond to anything in the violet or yellow frequency ranges, or if the target species is in water type/depth where these frequencies do not penetrate, both will be -perceived as the same: black (the absence of light).  Which means that junebug, banana yellow and midnight black will all be perceived the same, and will be useful when you want a strong profile for an illuminated background (at night-looking up). 

If you pour up the same grub in chartreuse, all of a sudden certain inshore species- like striped bass (probably snook too) can use their cone cells to sharpen up the image profile in high light/low water clarity situations where there is significant diffusion. This color can be an advantage.

I suspect that translucents and clears  tend to work in clear water because this is a reasonable imitation of the camouflage techniques that prey utilize.  There is a probably a high urgency strike alert in the fish's brain, as this sort of signal means a short window of opportunity.  And so on.

What does make this a bit tricky, is that pigments typically reflect more than one range of frequencies, and human perception does the rest. We see a hot pink lure. A tuna will pick up the blue waves, but not the red ones, since tuna have no red reception. It will essentially "see" a darker blue.   A blue lure of the appropriate frequency and intensity will appear identical to the tuna.

When you think about it for a bit, it can help to make some interesting color combinations to try.  Some may be popular, some not.   Black is an absolute killer for tuna, even in bright light, but fishermen don't like to buy black lures or flies for tuna.

If I was throwing plastics to snook at night under dock lights in less than clear water, I would put a translucent chartreuse/black combo high on my try list (for the reasons mentioned above).  Fish that puppy right at the edge of the light.   Don't know if this is a popular method/color combo  or not- but the science says it is worth a shot.

-J