Red/Orange Baits

[txchaser]

Just a couple of observations from a part of the country where red can matter a lot. Some of them might be relevant in your area too, but there's something like 44 (more?) kinds of crayfish/crawdads, and ours often have red or orange. I haven't seen much really bright red though, more like a muted red/maroonish.

 

Red and orange are not at all the same color, and don't treat them that way. Same thing for a red bait with an orange belly or a red/orange chatterbait. 

 

Red in clear water, red/orange in tannic or murky water. 

 

Generally if I'm fishing red I like a red/green laminate like SK's Falcon Craw. The red is muted, which is also my preference, if I'm on red. Red/black seems to do ok too.

 

Orange I have had the best luck with laminates of red/orange. 

 

A significant majority of my larger fish have come on a bait with red on it, and I don't fish red that much. Although that's changing this year. 

 

Bass have the physical structure to see two colors directly: Green and Red. Then there's white and black, and a bunch of tonal shades and flavors of mixes of green and red.

 

IMO the comment about grass is important - if green and red are the primary colors for a bass, a red bait (orange in murky) probably stands out a lot against a green background. Moving baits probably mostly getting active bass. 

 

 

[Catt]

4 hours ago, txchaser said:

but there's something like 44 (more?) kinds of crayfish/crawdads

 

There are 350 species of crawfish in the United States.

[Pat Brown]

My son is catching crayfish blind scooping dead leaves at the lake and pond while we bank fish.  They are 2+3 " long and mostly black with a little bit of deep mossy green.  At the end of the summer they had deep red mixed in.  I still think the red baits in the spring deal is mostly that bass are aggressive and hungry and water is often low/muddy from spring rains and red just helps them find it.

 

It's a shame the crawfish love dead leaves so much.  They're tricky to fish slow without collecting debris in my experience!  Bass get a twofer with dead leaves because they usually form a black spot wherever they collect on the bottom - which can be great for warming the bottom on sunny days.  Big bass will sit belly down in the black leaf mat.

 

We have also caught really big crawdads that are black with deep blue mixed in!  So black and blue does actually match real crayfish.  We should probably throw black and blue crankbaits more!  😎

[casts_by_fly]

This one is just for PA, but it jives pretty well with here in NJ also.  Not a great upload, but you can see the variance from light to dark and various shades between. 

 

[txchaser]

15 bucks for a crawfish trap on amazon and some cat food and you can see what some of your local ones look like.

[Bluebasser86]

Red is a confidence color for me and not just in cold water months and not just in dirty water.  It's been producing the last few trips. 

[Catt]

7 hours ago, txchaser said:

15 bucks for a crawfish trap on amazon and some cat food and you can see what some of your local ones look like.

 

H2O XPRESS 19' Crawfish Nets 4-Pack $8.99.

 

[Pat Brown]

Scoop dead leaves in the shallow muddy parts of the creek arms.  You'll see whatcha got real quick!

[rgasr63]

3 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Red is a confidence color for me and not just in cold water months and not just in dirty water.  It's been producing the last few trips. 

Nice catches !  Please tell us about the jerkbait in the last picture the bait monkey says I need one like that. Lol 

[Bluebasser86]

4 hours ago, rgasr63 said:

Nice catches !  Please tell us about the jerkbait in the last picture the bait monkey says I need one like that. Lol 

It's a Berkley Stunna 112 in the Blaze color. 6th Sense makes one that I also have in a color called Ditchweed that is yellow on one side and red on the other.

[Huckfinn38]

17 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Red is a confidence color for me and not just in cold water months and not just in dirty water.  It's been producing the last few trips. 

Nice work. Is that a OT sportsman 120 pdl?  Thats what I fish out of. I keep hoping my box full of red baits, Money Badgers, Frittsides, Rapalas, and Spros start working like they obviously work for u..

[Bluebasser86]

17 hours ago, Huckfinn38 said:

Nice work. Is that a OT sportsman 120 pdl?  Thats what I fish out of. I keep hoping my box full of red baits, Money Badgers, Frittsides, Rapalas, and Spros start working like they obviously work for u..

Yes it is. Bought it back in 2020 and been addicted to fishing out of it ever since. My boat just sits in the garage for the most part. 

[the reel ess]

Virtually all the money I've spent on red bass baits has been wasted. It simply doesn't produce here.

[scaleface]

3 hours ago, the reel ess said:

Virtually all the money I've spent on red bass baits has been wasted. It simply doesn't produce here.

 Early one year I made a bright orange spinnerbait because it was spring and the water was mud. Threw that thing for several hours without a sniff. Switched to a chartreuse skirt and immediately started catching bass. Havent used and orange or red spinnerbait since.

[Huckfinn38]

18 hours ago, the reel ess said:

Virtually all the money I've spent on red bass baits has been wasted. It simply doesn't produce here.

Im in the same boat. However all it takes is one good day using them and ill be purchasing more lol

[Munkin]

Red just doesn't work for me the same as firetiger.

 

Allen

[Munkin]

On 2/21/2024 at 8:56 AM, casts_by_fly said:

This one is just for PA, but it jives pretty well with here in NJ also.  Not a great upload, but you can see the variance from light to dark and various shades between. 

 

 

Everyone should look at their state's DNR website and see what the Crayfish (Crawfish for the Southerner's) look like. I think the color of crayfish determines which jig colors work better in a given area. For example I think it was Catt that posted a picture of a Crawfish that was black with red spots? In 43 years of fishing around Maryland I have never seen one that color.

 

Allen

[WRB]

On 2/21/2024 at 11:32 PM, Bluebasser86 said:

Red is a confidence color for me and not just in cold water months and not just in dirty water.  It's been producing the last few trips. 

Looks orange to me!

Tom

[Bluebasser86]

1 hour ago, WRB said:

Looks orange to me!

Tom

It's my phone's camera. 2 "Blaze", colored baits from Berkely (maybe red/orange), and a "Delta Red", Spro Speed Demon.

 

Added another good one on a red/orange bait today. 

 

[WRB]

This what I have debated for decades about color, how we see it depends on how our brain interprets it. We have no idea how a bass brain interprets color.

You say it’s your camera turning red into orange that looks orange to me. If it looks orange to me it’s orange. What does your red lures look like to a bass....food!

Tom

[casts_by_fly]

2 hours ago, Munkin said:

 

Everyone should look at their state's DNR website and see what the Crayfish (Crawfish for the Southerner's) look like. I think the color of crayfish determines which jig colors work better in a given area. For example I think it was Catt that posted a picture of a Crawfish that was black with red spots? In 43 years of fishing around Maryland I have never seen one that color.

 

Allen

I agree and would expand that to all of the biologist reports and info for their area. PA and NJ both do a decent job of posting biologists reports for the various lakes around. Want to know the primary baitfish? Biologist sampling. Does a lake have big fish?  Same. Going to a new area?  Check the reports for lakes in that area. 

[casts_by_fly]

21 minutes ago, WRB said:

This what I have debated for decades about color, how we see it depends on how our brain interprets it. We have no idea how a bass brain interprets color.

You say it’s your camera turning red into orange that looks orange to me. If it looks orange to me it’s orange. What does your red lures look like to a bass....food!

Tom

photos can be highly deceptive. I’m sure you’ve seen images that have been edited where the same thing looks two different colors. A camera is doing all of that on its own. It’s interpreting what it thinks a scene is and the data it’s taken and guessing what it should look like. Some cameras processors tend to make an image warmer, some more vibrant, etc. If you ever take photos in raw mode and look at them with minimal interpretation you’ll see how bland pictures actually look without the camera manipulating. Never trust a photo and especially never trust co lot in a photo unless you have a definite reference for color like a white sheet or something truly grey/black in the photo. 
 

also, while we might not be able to interpret what a bass thinks when it sees a color, you can get a pretty good idea of what the actually see in the first place. while it won’t be perfect, Steve rodgers just dropped a video that approximates it. 
 

 

[txchaser]

On 2/25/2024 at 7:28 PM, Munkin said:

(Crawfish for the Southerner's)

Little further south and it's crawdad. 

On 2/25/2024 at 9:47 PM, casts_by_fly said:

photos can be highly deceptive. I’m sure you’ve seen images that have been edited where the same thing looks two different colors. A camera is doing all of that on its own. It’s interpreting what it thinks a scene is and the data it’s taken and guessing what it should look like. Some cameras processors tend to make an image warmer, some more vibrant, etc. If you ever take photos in raw mode and look at them with minimal interpretation you’ll see how bland pictures actually look without the camera manipulating. Never trust a photo and especially never trust co lot in a photo unless you have a definite reference for color like a white sheet or something truly grey/black in the photo. 
 

also, while we might not be able to interpret what a bass thinks when it sees a color, you can get a pretty good idea of what the actually see in the first place. while it won’t be perfect, Steve rodgers just dropped a video that approximates it. 
 

 

Your video should be it's own post. 

IMO the pic filters are ok but not as good as blue light blocker glasses that some of us use for electronics at night. Does a similar thing as the filter, but any time you take a picture you may have camera effects. It's really mind blowing to look at your tackle box or a bag of soft plastics. 

 

 

[casts_by_fly]

8 hours ago, txchaser said:

Your video should be it's own post. 

IMO the pic filters are ok but not as good as blue light blocker glasses that some of us use for electronics at night. Does a similar thing as the filter, but any time you take a picture you may have camera effects. It's really mind blowing to look at your tackle box or a bag of soft plastics. 

 

 

 

I wish it was my video and could take credit for it.

 

And I agree entirely about filters.  I used to shoot photogrphy for a long time.  Its amazing what you can do with filters on the front of a lens.  For the first hundred years of photos that was the best way to manipulate the light coming into the lens, so photographers ended up getting pretty good with them!  Steve Rodgers uses an underwater ROV to take video of bass behavior.  I was hoping he'd put a filter on the front of it and video away.

[Functional]

Not only depends on state/region but lake as well. @Pat Brown says the crawfish he sees are near black while I'm maybe 2 hours east of the lakes he fishes and mine are clay in color (orange/brown). 

 

Even with my home lake having orange/brown crawfish I have had zero luck last season when I made it an effort to fish red/orange in the early part of the season. I'll give it another go this year (home lakes temps JUST got above 50) but so far red/orange has caught me more times than its caught fish. Like most posting from central NC I've had much more luck with shad colors in just about every form of hard bait/spinnerbait/chatterbait.