If you’re going to the tackle shop, you need a game plan. The lure’s style as well as hue are both important. Color is one of those variables that’s preventing you from maximizing your fish-catching potential. This advice from five experienced captains will help you learn faster.
Offshore Trolling
Florida Keys Favorites
Asked what his favorite trolling lure colors are, Florida Keys Capt. Jim Sharpe replies, “Purple, black, and clear for blue marlin.” Although I couldn’t figure out why, I discovered a school of skipjacks while trolling down to the west. Well, that purple, black, and clear lure smoking in the spread looked just like a skipjack. Marlin eat skipjacks. That justified the color combination for me, since it produces blue marlins.”
The natural look of mahi and blackfins is also emphasized, according to Sharpe. “We once put a flying fish in the livewell that turned an amazing blue,” he recalls. “Lighted-up shades of blue on white or silver, be it skirts or lures, resemble a flying fish in distress.” The combo gets hits.
In addition to small multicolored lures with gold in them, bigger blackfins seem to be attracted to gold as well as mahimahi and sailfish. Gold is also thought to pick up the color accent in a blackfin, and just about everything eats juvenile blackfins.
“Small multicolored lures with gold in them also seem to catch the bigger blackfins, along with mahimahi and sails. I believe gold picks up that color accent in a blackfin, and just about anything eats juvenile blackfins.”
Jersey to the Bahamas
Avalon, New Jersey’s Captain Joe Trainor had a good year in big-game tournaments this season. He won a Cape May tournament with a 657-pound blue marlin and finished second in several others. Additionally, Trainor fishes the Bahamas, where he has caught 14 wahoo greater than 100 pounds, including blue and white marlin. He also prefers natural colors.
In his opinion, color does matter. As a general rule, we mix colors at first to see which colors fish prefer, but because of their resemblance to flying fish, blue and white combos remain a Bahamas standout. For wahoo, it’s purple and black, along with red and black—patterns of skipjacks, bonito, blackfins and yellowfins that big wahoo eat. Blue marlin, definitely green and black, which picks up a mahi pattern.
Black is also becoming popular, whether it’s black dredges, black mudflaps, or even black lures. Maybe it stands out better on clear days, or catches the dark topside of fish, or both?
Mid-Atlantic and South
For mahi, I select blue and white skirts, blue and silver lures (flying fish). Don’t overlook green and yellow skirts when targeting bruiser mahi because they regularly consume them.
Green lures have long been popular off the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, especially for white marlin and tuna. Most offshore pelagics feed on mahi.
In order to be a good card player, you need to know when to use the right hand. Case in point: We trolled skirted ballyhoo and lures in a variety of sizes offshore of the Green Turtle Club in Abaco, Bahamas, in May last year. Mahi were around, so the larger baits for blue marlin carried green-and-yellow skirts or lure heads, while small ballyhoos and lures were a mixture of green and yellow and blue and silver for white marlin, sailfish, and tuna.
The flying fish and blackfins were everywhere in one area, so I switched out a pair of flat-line ballyhoo and matched them with blue-and-silver skirts. Suddenly, a white marlin rose on our port teaser and charged one of the ballyhoo I replaced. I don’t know if the white marlin would have eaten a mahi color pattern, but I’ve seen color make a real difference in situations in the past.
On the Drop
Deep Jigs and UV Light
Often, pure white or white with a red head outperforms yellow colors when added to a traditional arrowhead jig for grouper or snapper.
By comparison, yellow is more productive when probing offshore weed lines and debris for mahi and bailing schoolfish with bucktails. Yellow mimics a favorite mahi forage, the pufferfish. Yellow is also more similar to the hues of weed-living species, such as banded rudderfish, tripletails, and bar jacks.
A master at flutter-style jigging, Benny Ortiz has mastered the art to depths of 1,100 feet. What are his tips for best results?
“Color does matter with these irons, but maybe not to the extent people think,” Ortiz says. “I believe irons that reflect UV light—like chartreuse, orange and pink—produce best in pretty much all depths, given that UV light penetrates deeper than standard light. Take golden tilefish, for example, which are caught in and around 1,000-foot depths. They have huge eyes—they’re able to see something. So, it’s not just sensing movement and vibrations. I’m sure they can see these irons, and certain ones do stand out better.”
“If I had to break it down, I’ll go with hues that best reflect UV light,” he says. “However, in depths shallower than 350 feet, dark green on top and silver or lighter undersides often work much better than solid colors.”
A dark-to-light transition could mimic goggle-eyes, jacks and other juvenile gamefish abundant in these depths. He agrees that glow-in-the-dark accents can produce in deep water without light.
“In waters deeper than 450 feet, some element of glow works,” Ortiz says. “It might lend a faint amount of brightness to where it’s noticed, in addition to the vibrations.”
Sources: Saltwatersportsman
