Bass are weird

[LrgmouthShad]

I don’t understand these fish. 
 

A time or two.. actually several.. I have painted nickel spinnerbait blades with pearl nail polish. The finish turns out to be a cool, metallicy white color. As soon as I tried it the first time, I thought for sure it was going to be a winning combination. The fish don’t like it. I have tried it enough times over maybe a year or so to know there is something they don’t like about that shade of white. But if I throw a true painted white blade, that gets bit. I hardly think the bass can tell that my painting job is sloppy. No, I think the shade of white is what they can tell the difference between. Bill murphy talks about shades of colors in his book and emphasizes that it can make a difference. How can it make such a difference to the bass? And if this matters…. What else does? How many pieces to the puzzle must we figure out before we get bass to bite? It’s all very interesting. 

[Scott F]

You might try that pearl painted bait on another body of water or during a different time of the year and it might turn them on….or not.

[Bird]

Completely understand what your say'n and definitely doesn't make sense at times.

 

Fished for 6 hours today throwing proven prespawn baits, Jigs and jerkbaits and never got a bite the 1st 5 hrs.

Grabbed a med light with a pearl 3 1/2" Keitech swimbait and the fish exploded on it for the next hour. Idk

[Deleted account]

Apophenia.

[LrgmouthShad]

3 minutes ago, Deleted account said:

Apophenia.

I don't think so. I can give it more time, but have tried it quite a bit with different blade styles. They just don't seem to like it

[Deleted account]

1 minute ago, LrgmouthShad said:

I don't think so. I can give it more time, but have tried it quite a bit with different blade styles. They just don't seem to like it

Send me your worst one, I'll send you some fish pictures. I find blade color if far down in what makes a spinnerbait effective. I will say I have gold blade bias, even though I know it's in my head.

[LrgmouthShad]

2 minutes ago, Deleted account said:

Send me your worst one, I'll send you some fish pictures

I ain't saying they won't catch fish. I am saying they do not seem to catch them as good, where I am fishing. As far as the importance of blade color, we will just disagree on that. You have more experience than I do and I do respect that. 

[Deleted account]

6 minutes ago, LrgmouthShad said:

I ain't saying they won't catch fish. I am saying they do not seem to catch them as good, where I am fishing. As far as the importance of blade color, we will just disagree on that. You have more experience than I do and I do respect that. 

The NYC reservoirs by you can be like that.

[Bird]

90% of my Spinnerbaits have gold blades and they catch 90% of the fish......but I throw them 90% of the time.

[LrgmouthShad]

11 minutes ago, Deleted account said:

The NYC reservoirs by you can be like that.

Smaller ponds around here that don't get a lot of fishing pressure, any color blade does fine and virtually any size. They love any spinnerbait in the water. As soon as I start getting into waters with more pressure, however, I lean heavily towards silver blades and smaller blades. White or metal flake silver are excellent when it is cloudy. All the water around here is clear and has created a bias that I have towards silver/white blades in clear water. 

 

It is very helpful to know that when I leave here and primarily start fishing elsewhere, different blade colors may become prominent or may not matter at all. So, I maintained that blade color is important to me. It is, but perhaps when I leave this area, it may not be that way anymore.

[trout123]

I spent a whole lot of time making rage craws look just like the crayfish in our locals lakes, never got bit. Tried with scent to see if they smelled my hands, never got bit. Get back to a pb&j craw and it got smacked even thought it looks nothing like the crayfish we have.

 

[king fisher]

    I prefer either gold ,silver, or solid colors, white, char. black, for my blades.  When I guided for silver salmon I would make hundreds of inline spinners of every color combination imaginable.  Silvers are very aggressive, and will hit any color of inline spinner, but by far their favorite was solid pink.  After catching them every cast for an hour, they would quite biting the pink, and solid black would catch a few more before the spinner bite was done.  Some days silver or gold worked best, but most days it was either solid pink, solid chartreuse, and solid black.

       One winter I found some metallic colored blades.  One was called Black Nickle, and the the others were called metallic, pink, red, chart. and blue.  I made up many spinners with these blades thinking they would be perfect.  A combination of color, as well as metallic flash.  The results were horrible.  The solid pink and solid chart. out fished the metallic colors 30 to one.  After that summer I have always preferred a solid matt finish when using colored blades for any species of fish.  I'm sure there are many exceptions, but trying to force Silvers to strike metallic colored blades all summer has given me a bias that will be hard to overcome.  I have had luck catching bass with white spinnerbait blades with glitter in the paint, but the paint is still a solid white.  Solid painted blades make no sense to me, because they don't produce any flash, but the fish in my lakes prefer them over silver and gold on many days and I have learned  its best to simply give the fish what they want.

[Catt]

3 hours ago, LrgmouthShad said:

I don’t understand these fish. 

 

Welcome to bass fishing! ?

 

I've seen times color can make all the difference in world.

 

I've seen times when color made absolutely no difference at all.

 

I've seen times I had to change colors often to get bit.

 

Like you said, "Bass are weird!"

[Reel]

We are not talking only about color here.  When you put nail polish on a blade you change the weight of the blade.  You change the flash and you change the vibration.  These are all things that make or break a spinnerbait.

[ironbjorn]

Idk maybe it's the scent of the polish

[Tennessee Boy]

12 hours ago, Deleted account said:

Apophenia.

Here’s your answer.  If you disagree please post your process for evaluating the different spinner baits and the statistical analysis of your results here so that we can peer review them.

 

 

 

[rgasr63]

I just got to ask a question. The bait that got the painted blade I assume it was brand new.  Sometimes when I purchase lures from the store I will buy 2 or 3 and only 1 will catch fish.could it be possible this might be the case here? Maybe put that blade on a bait that fish have been caught on before? 

[LrgmouthShad]

24 minutes ago, rgasr63 said:

I just got to ask a question. The bait that got the painted blade I assume it was brand new.  Sometimes when I purchase lures from the store I will buy 2 or 3 and only 1 will catch fish.could it be possible this might be the case here? Maybe put that blade on a bait that fish have been caught on before? 

Well, like I said, I’ve done it with several spinnerbaits since first trying it maybe a year/year and a half ago. Some caught fish before trying the polish, some, I don’t really remember. The most recent one I put it on was a booyah covert double Indiana where I changed the back blade to silver, and that spinnerbait model, not the specific spinnerbait but the model, normally catches the crap out of them no matter where I am fishing around here. It’s a good mid-depth spinnerbait

[scaleface]

Of all the weird fish , in all the weird west , bass are the weirdest .

[Dogface]

7 hours ago, ironbjorn said:

Idk maybe it's the scent of the polish

 

Yes, I agree. 

[ironbjorn]

23 minutes ago, Dogface said:

 

Yes, I agree. 

My girl's cat is a mental psychopath so the vet recommended she get this pheromone system. It's like one of those things women plug into the walls that vaporizes liquid into smell good stuff, except this one cannot be smelled by humans and is the feel good pheromones cats like. One of these devices is plugged in and emitting this stuff right next to my rod rack. I have noticed that I have caught absolutely nothing with a pre-rigged bait since she got these. I'm starting to wonder if it's because the baits I have pre-rigged are getting this crap on them and the bass don't like it.

[Deleted account]

1 hour ago, ironbjorn said:

My girl's cat is a mental psychopath so the vet recommended she get this pheromone system. It's like one of those things women plug into the walls that vaporizes liquid into smell good stuff, except this one cannot be smelled by humans and is the feel good pheromones cats like. One of these devices is plugged in and emitting this stuff right next to my rod rack. I have noticed that I have caught absolutely nothing with a pre-rigged bait since she got these. I'm starting to wonder if it's because the baits I have pre-rigged are getting this crap on them and the bass don't like it.

Maybe, gasoline and sunblock are fish kryptonite in my experience.

[WRB]

What Murphy was pointing out is our vision is different the bass vision, how their brain interprets colors and what they can see underwater. Bottom line is we don’t have the answers.

Going from memory Murphy paint 10 exactly the same dive crank baits the same shade of white from 10 different paint suppliers. 1 lure out fished all the others by far. Bill then painted the other 9 crank baits white from the one supplier was catching more bass and all 10 lures caught bass. Proving the one supplier “white” of the same shade attracted more strikes. Murphy being a dental technician knows his white shades professionally. Bill didn't disclose what the white shade looked under infrared or ultra violet. He just wanted to prove that see colors differently then we do.

What Murphy also said in the chapter is every time we think know bass the green fish prove we don’t.

Tom

[Catt]

22 hours ago, Tennessee Boy said:

Here’s your answer.  If you disagree please post your process for evaluating the different spinner baits and the statistical analysis of your results here so that we can peer review them.

 

 

If you believe "Apophenia" is the answer please post your process for evaluating the different spinner baits and the statistical analysis of your results here so that we can peer review them.

 

5 hours ago, WRB said:

What Murphy also said in the chapter is every time we think know bass the green fish prove we don’t.

Tom

 

Bass are just weird!

 

How to prove scientifically why bass do certain things is impossible.

[Tennessee Boy]

1 hour ago, Catt said:

 

If you believe "Apophenia" is the answer please post your process for evaluating the different spinner baits and the statistical analysis of your results here so that we can peer review them.

Apophenia exist in people not spinner baits.