Does Color Really Matter for Striper Lures?

Despite all that’s been written and talked about as far as what lure colors striped bass prefer, we’ve settled nothing. Lure-makers churn out new patterns and colors yearly, seductive eye candy for any angler worth his salt. Everyone has colors they’re positive will catch, while many a harried sharpie has confessed to spending decades jealously guarding his secret “killer” color. What if it was all for naught? What if lure color didn’t matter most of the time, and when it did, it was in ways most anglers hadn’t considered?

A definitive answer is currently beyond our grasp, but I’m skeptical that lure color matters when fishing for striped bass except in a couple of specific circumstances. I am not alone in my suspicion that lure color makes a difference to stripers. There are a number of thoughtful anglers who have discounted the role of color in lure choice. William “Doc” Muller uses only the most limited range of lure colors, primarily white, black, or blue. Toby Lapinski seems primarily interested in lure color as it relates to visibility. Montauk surfcaster Bill Jakob doubts color is visible at night and concerns himself with the relative contrast in the top and bottom half of a plug.

Why Would Color Matter?

I approach the topic of lure color with a slightly different question than I’ve heard anyone else ask. I don’t ask “Does lure color matter?”, but “Why would lure color matter?” If fish prefer a specific color to the exclusion of others, there has to be a reason in terms of increased evolutionary fitness. The process of evolution doesn’t support random or irrelevant behaviors.

I can think of only three advantages for stripers selecting one color lure over another. A particular color may be more visible to bass, which allows for more successful hunting. Picking one color to the rejection of others ensures more calories or more efficient caloric intake. Or, preferring certain colors is important for avoiding danger.

Starting with the last reason first: for striped bass, I don’t believe that danger plays any role in lure color preference or avoidance. I don’t know of any poisonous fish they might eat that have a particular coloration. This eliminates danger as a reason for color preference.

It’s likely that lure visibility can make a difference for striped bass. I’ve had experiences when highly visible lures outproduce others in discolored water. One occurred three years ago, when on two consecutive days, big bass had bunker pinned up against a jetty in wave-churned water. On both days, chartreuse bucktails and trailers clearly out-fished white. In those conditions, the stripers probably used vibration to help locate the bucktail since visibility was one to two feet. I think the visibility of the chartreuse bucktail made it that much easier in “noisy” and dirty water for bass to see it at the last second and seal the deal.

While chartreuse is highly visible to the human eye, there is also evidence that it is for striped bass as well—although it may not be for largemouth bass. Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences researcher Andrij Horodysky has studied striper vision and found that “Nothing in the wild is ever chartreuse, but the color is smack dab in the middle of a striper’s visual range. The fish can see it really well.” Black lures are also more visible in dirty, discolored water, so they too can offer some advantage. A bit of caution, though.  Because logic and experience both indicate that plug visibility matters in discolored water, my experiences and those of other anglers are considered anecdotal evidence, a form of evidence scientists consider insufficient for proof. Unfortunately, in fishing, anecdotal evidence is often the main type we have to understand the habits of gamefish.

The last question is whether selectively and exclusively homing in on a specific color gives striped bass an adaptive advantage through a net surplus of calories versus other predatory strategies. Striped bass live in open ocean, bays, and estuaries on both coasts, as well as freshwater lakes.  Their diet includes shrimp, eels, herring, bunker, mullet, sand eels, tautog, scup, lobster, sand fleas, flounder, worms, clams, and spot, to name just a partial list. John Tiedeman reviewed studies of striped bass food sources and found that their diet is comprised of more than 65 species of fish and more than 45 invertebrates.

While some of these food sources are more calorie-rich than others, striped bass don’t necessarily focus on high-calorie baits such as herring and bunker to the exclusion of less calorie-intensive sources of food. The calories provided by a bait is only half the equation. Hunting strategies (which I believe are shaped by genetic, innate preferences or biases) must account not only for the amount of calories ingested, but also for the loss of calories in searching for and harvesting baits.

Biologists have developed a model called optimal foraging theory, which predicts that any predator will attempt to gain the most calories with the least caloric expenditure for maximum efficiency. Striped bass often stay with a reliable food source even if it’s not optimal in terms of calories if they can avoid expending energy searching for other food that they may not find. For a generalist like striped bass, the guarantee of a reliable food source is often—but not always—preferable to the risky proposition of expending energy hunting for higher-calorie baits. Eating whatever is available and whatever color it might be often proves to be the more adaptive hunting strategy. This would indicate that a hunting strategy based on selectivity of color under most conditions lacks an apparent adaptive function, undermining any reason stripers would selectively focus on a single lure color.

Night Time. No Color?

Sharp anglers use visible colors to get bites that others may not. These same anglers are also the ones who think the most about their lure choice, cycling through different colors on night tides to see “what’s working.” I’ve done this for years, not necessarily with conviction, but with enough belief to keep at it. Belief, however, sometimes runs smack into evidence. The evidence pretty conclusively indicates, if not necessarily proves, that color either doesn’t matter at night or at best minimally so.

Trout and bluegill vision are far more studied than striped bass, yet their eyes are nearly identical anatomically. This makes them a useful comparison, though there is a very small degree of uncertainty. Fish have minor variations in eye structure and functionality as well as specific hunting strategies that adapt for their specific environment.

Unlike humans, striped bass lack an iris that can contract to lessen or expand the amount of light that enters the lens. Their iris is fixed. Striped bass also have no eyelids and therefore cannot reduce light entering by squinting. The primary way they adjust to light and dark conditions is through the use of rods and cones.

Similar to humans, trout and stripers have both rods and cones in their eyes. Cones are used in bright conditions and can register a range of colors. Rods are used under low-light situations and distinguish only a continuum of gray from black to white. Rods are 500 to 1,000 times more sensitive to light than cones. In trout and bluegill, the use of rods and cones is an all-or-nothing proposition. In daylight, the rods recede and only the cones are active. At night, the cones recede and the rods are active.

With only rods active at night, trout cannot see color whatsoever. They see shades of gray and the contrast between shades at night. Given the grossly identical ophthalmologic anatomy of trout and striped bass, it is logical to conclude that striped bass similarly do not see color at night due to their reliance of rods for night vision. Striped bass, however, have not been specifically studied. It is known that striper rods come forward while cones recede at night in a manner similar to trout, but one can’t be 100 percent certain that this leads to the same end result. This almost infinitesimal possibility aside, it seems clear that during night tides, when the most dedicated and thoughtful anglers worry about lure color, is the exact time that lure color isn’t registered and doesn’t matter.

In daytime, bass use cones and readily see color. Yet, even here, there is reason to be skeptical that things are as they appear to us. Fish may not see the colors that we think they do. Water creates color shifts and changes in color saturation based on clarity and turbidity. Color in water is typically not reliably seen until at close range. Striped bass in the Northeast, which overall has poor water clarity, may not be seeing colors as yellow, blue, or pink as we do through the air, and when they do, it’s only when they get up close.

Value, Contrast, and Hue

At night, the tendency of colors to turn to shades of white, gray, and black mean that striped bass don’t see color but, rather, value, which is defined as a color’s relative lightness or darkness. It is one of the three components of color along with hue and saturation. The value of a color may be identical, although the hue can be different. For example, a dark green plug and a dark blue one have similar values. The same could go for yellow and pink, and so on.

Before continuing, I am going to switch from using the term “color,” which all fishermen use to refer to what is actually hue. Color is comprised of three elements: value, hue and saturation. When anglers say color, they really mean hue.

Under dark conditions, striped bass exclusively rely on rods for night vision, they see value and contrasts in value. Hue wouldn’t matter at all or barely so.

Bill Jakobs also believes that stripers don’t see hue at night, so he focuses on value by filling his night plug bag with differing levels of contrast between the top of the plug and the bottom. Where I part ways with Bill is in the belief that under most conditions bass are tuning in to any specific hue, contrast, value, or shape. Bill’s approach rejects hue but implicitly maintains the idea of selectivity: that bass typically are selective in the bait they feed on. I, for reasons I’ve stated above, don’t believe that selectivity is a feeding striper strategy most of the time; therefore, I don’t feel the need to cover a range of hues or value contrasts when fishing at night. Instead, I stock my plug bag to concentrate on different depths, profiles, and vibration levels.

When Color Does Matter: Predominate Baits

There is one scenario where I believe a lure’s hue or value may make an important difference. This occurs when there is a vast amount of a single type of bait. Curiously, it does so in contradictory ways. Sometimes, the fish are locked in on a predominant bait, so matching its hue or value may provide a pronounced advantage. At other times, throwing a lure that clearly stands out and contrasts from the predominate bait can also improve strike rates.

I believe that when striped bass are feeding on a single predominate bait, they become “tuned” to that one bait. It’s as if the environment is stimulating or hitting one note over and over until it triggers a tipping point for a bass’ innate capacity to lock in on that note (bait). This occurs frequently with trout. When there is a specific insect hatch, trout can be extremely selective about shape, silhouette, and coloration. The process of zeroing in on the specific qualities of an exclusively targeted prey is related to what ecologists refer to as “search image.” When predators form a search image, they focus almost entirely on that one type of prey by identifying its defining features in terms of silhouette, size, color, and movement, in that order. Randall notes that in the hierarchy of search-image criteria for fish, silhouette and size are more important than color (hue) and movement. Presumably, focusing exclusively on the exact characteristics of a single bait when it is overwhelmingly prevalent, and almost no other baits are present, provides an adaptive advantage. This scenario temporarily converts striped bass from generalist to specialist predators. It remains open to question if color makes nearly as much difference as silhouette and size in these circumstances.

Yet, the opposite can be true as well. There are times when there is so much of one bait that the best way to get the attention of a striper is to throw something that stands out. One theory I’ve been considering is that contrast can be appealing when there is one predominate bait in a limited area, but when there are other baits around, the fish are not entirely conditioned to focus on just one.

I’ve had a day at the Cape Cod Canal when mackerel were getting blasted in front of me, yet I did very well with white Stick Shadds. I clearly did better than others around me. The white plugs stood out in the mass of green mackerel.

When an angler is out-fishing others around him, there can be many factors at work, so some caution is needed before jumping to conclusions. I repeated that experience the next day at a slightly different canal location, which adds a bit more anecdotal evidence. Although this relates more to profile and size, I’ve had success throwing large plugs and soft plastics around big schools of small bait such as white bait or peanut bunker. The principle is the same, however, to try to stand out in a vast amount of a single bait.

Old ideas die slowly, and new ones take time to be assimilated. Getting excited about an amazing paint job or fishy-looking color is fun, while logic and science can be a bit of a wet blanket. This doesn’t mean that using reason grounded in biology isn’t valuable, but it might mean that, like lure color, it may not matter until it does.

Source: https://onthewater.com/does-color-really-matter-for-striper-lures

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