I have an old fishin buddy that seems to think that the color Red is invisible to crappie and sandbass.
i think that he maybe onto sompthing.
He fishes almost everyday with minnows or shad and has been experimenting with the regular gold crappie hooks vs the red hooks.
He told me today that the crappie cannot see the “Red” colored hooks.
I didnt argue with eem,I try to be open minded 99% of the time.
Realizing that lures are designed to catch fisherman first, fish second, look at all the lures with red accents on them. There are the bleeding shad patterns, gill indications, some fly pattern incorporate red for gills. I have not studied the subject, I am a fan of brown hooks, or steel blue, but I thought the red was there as an attraction. I hope I have adequately confused the subject more than before.
Uncle Jesse:
Are you referring to lures designed for crappie and sandbass? He asked about specific species of fish, and his ‘friend’ is apparently drowning minnows for them; not using lures.
Aged Sage
I think fish can see red. I add red to a lot of my patterns that I tie.
Can’t say whether crappie or ‘sandbass’ (no clue) can see the color red.
But the use of red hooks for every species is increasing, and some of my tournament fishing friends won’t use anything else.
Whether it’s an attractor, or the fish can’t see them, they do work very well.
I know one guide on the San Juan that caught an awful lot of trout on a red scud hook. Just the hook, no dressing at all.
Buddy
Red is the first color of the spectrum to “disappear” under water. MY opinion, though… I don’t think red hooks are a marketing scheme. There’s more important things to worry about than hook color.
I fish jigs and a plain hook with a minnow and yes according to a color selector (bass fisherman came out with them) red is one of the first colors to diappear. Now saying that my catch ration is no higher than when I fish with plain bronze hooks, but something about the red that seems to help when fishing a hand tied jig, so who can say.
Not something I really worry about, if the fish are turned off with a bright hook change to a bronze one and vice versa.
Fatman
Buddy, sandbass are a regional name for white bass, a smaller freshwater cousin of the striped bass.
Sage, I was speaking in generalities [it is an election year] bu there are a lot of red and hot pink in crappie lures, not as much as bass baits however. When I comes to sand bass, I am a complete novice. Crappie and LMB being in the same general family I thought their vision would likely be similar, but I am not a marine biologist.
Even if they can’t see the color, they would still see something. There would be an object there, regardless of their ability to see determine its color. Humans don’t see UV or infrared light, but that doesn’t make an object that only reflects UV light invisible to us, it just appears black. A red object reflects wavelengths of light that humans perceive as red and absorbs all other colors. A yellow object reflects wavelengths that combine to appear yellow to us. If something reflects all light in the visible (to humans) spectrum it appears white, if it reflects no light and absorbs it all, it appears black. Thats part of the reason white things stay cooler in the sun and black things get hot quicker. Its also why a red light can be shined on a white object and the object will appear red, it only has the red light to reflect, but shine it on a black object and it stays black. So based on this, crappie can most definitely see the red hooks, the only question would be whether they actually appear red to them, or if they appear simply as black, which wouldn’t be much different from using a standard bronze hook. I haven’t ever seen a definitive answer as to the ability of fish to differentiate colors, but I feel like adding some red to flys/hooks/jigs can’t hurt. If its in the right spot, (gills) then it will look natural to a fish, they either see red and it matches, or they don’t see red, so it looks black and the same would be true of a natural fish.
TL;DR version: Bottom line, they see the hooks, whether they appear red or not is another question, but color perception doesn’t make an object invisible. If he’s seeing better results with red hooks, I’d chalk it up to the red being an extra attractor, but they certainly do not become invisible.
Thanks for all the input fellas, I myself agree with the fact that they see sompthing and like joe says,they see sompthin.
Pink for instance at Lake Texoma Spillway on cloudy days, my go to jig has always been Pink.
The Striper seem to hit Pink or Hot Pink more than any other color as far as Crappie Jigs go.
On sunny days they go for white and Chartruece Larger Bucktail Jigs. This is clear water.
My buddy is fishing at FT Phantom in Abilene Texas and the water is muddy murkey so this means the crappie and sandbass have to get really close to the minnows and probably aint got time to look at a hook.
Not sure on crappies, but I often tie a ‘trigger’ in on my flies-red for most, but for white bass, a friend and I have found that a hot pink throat on most flies seem to have an affect on our catch.