Flats Sunglasses?

[fr8dog]

Heading out to Oahu next week for bones. What color lens works best in high sun for sight fishing?

[MNFisher]

Amber seems to work best for me

[steck]

I like rose, although amber is fine. Yellow is too light for the brightness of the sun, and the traditional grey or blue lens that the off shore guys use to protect their eyes is not ideal for sight fishing in skinny water.

[pescamexicana]

I have tried amber, blue, green and chrome...amber is as good as any and better than most.

[flyguy66]

For sight-fishing on shallow flats early and late in the day, I like brown or a color exclusive to my eyewear sponsor (HaberVision) Copper-Rose. You will find that a LOT of HI and FL flats guides have gone to the HaberVision Copper-Rose. It's not a sales pitch. I'm just mentioning the relationship in the interest of being honest about my relationship. Depending on water and sky conditions, I may stick with brown or even C-R midday on the flats, but on deeper flats, beaches, and more open water and bright sun situations I have found it much better to change to a high quality gray lense that is photo-sensitive (all of my glasses are photo-sensitive).

The bone fish flats in HI average 3-5 ft in depth from what I understand. That is not what I would call "shallow" for sight-fishing. But the bones are large and the water is exceptionally clear. The guides and locals have learned to pick them out consistently. But this isn't casting to tailing bone fish in a foot of water over a white marl bottom like in the Bahamas. In the Caribbean, I would suggest a more open water type of glasses for bright days and a pair of low-light glasses for overcast days. White fish against a white bottom on a sunny day are hard to pick out unless you have the right optics and are used to spotting them. And the right glasses for those conditions will leave you almost blind if it gets really cloudy or you go fishing at the crack of dawn or sunset.

Hawaii is a horse of a different color...pun intended. I'm pretty sure most of that fishing is over very green grass flats. It is usuallly quite clear in Hawaii most of the time. Even during rainy season it doesn't stay socked in a whole lot. I've spent quite a bit of time there...just not fishing for bone fish. You'll probably want to consult someone who has been there and done that, but my guess would be that a good gray photo-sensitive lense would serve you well. But I would be strongly inclined to take a pair of high quality polarized amber lenses along just in case. But this is really the strength of the Copper-Rose from HaberVision. You get the vision-enhancing qualities of amber glasses (contrast, depth perception, and motion detection) and the better photo-sensitivity range (ability to allow light to pass or block more light as conditions demand) of Copper or Brown lenses without distorting true color very much. Only gray does a better job of transmitting true color in a tinted lens.

[pescamexicana]

All of the guides I know use Blue Lense on the flats. I use Green or Chrome and see the same fish they do. I am sure there is more than a marketing reason to produce lense in different colors but I have not figured it out.