David Green
When it comes to productive lures, something small and brightly coloured often gets the bites when all else fails to produce the goods.
LURE fishing is a fascinating business, and getting fish to eat your finest offerings is a very inexact science. But there is one underused idea that often seems to crack a pattern when things are tough, regardless of whether you target bass or billfish. This is using a really small, extremely bright coloured lure in a seemingly ludicrous colour.
A tiny offering in fluoro pink, chartreuse or vivid blue sometimes gets a bite when other lures just keep on swimming. And very often the brightest lure is a white lure. My good mate Mitch Calcutt makes Black Snack skirted lures with Yo Zuri skirts. His favourite colour (in just about every lure he uses) is white. The problem with white skirted trolling lures is that no one buys them, except for the locals around here on the Gold Coast who see that the white, quite small “Fat Simmo” trolling lure gets repeatedly smashed by big blue marlin. So while there is a local demand for these great lures, they just don’t sell elsewhere.
White is not technically a colour, but white is bright because it reflects all the light that hits it, which makes it easier for fish to see in many situations. Because it can be seen easily, you can use a smaller lure profile and get a better hook up rate when the monster eats the peanut. Small lures generally get inhaled by most fish and the hooks get a good chance to grab. This season just past, and the last one for that matter, saw big blue marlin eat smallish white lures with gusto.
But it isn’t just billfish that like white lures. I was trolling for mackerel a few weeks back and the tinsel and pink jet head that I troll as the “shotgun” lure a long way back needed a refit from fish damage, so I took Mitch’s advice and reskirted it in white. This is only a small lure when compared to the other offerings we troll, but it was nailed repeatedly over the next few trips by some pretty big mackerel to around 18 kilos. Even in the ridiculously rough conditions we fished in the mackerel were able to find the small white lure in an ocean of chop and ate it very well.
In the freshwater, both trout and bass anglers have long been aware of the effectiveness of small, bright lures. Sometimes a tiny super bright minnow or Tassie Devil gets bites on the trout lakes when all else fails. This is often the case when the water is a bit dirty. Bass also love white lures, and white skirts on spinnerbaits are very effective.
Fluorescence is another important principle that makes lures appear brighter to fish. Fluorescent materials absorb white light and reflect it in another wavelength at increased intensity. This makes fluorescent colours appear brighter than non-fluorescent colours. Chartreuse in fluorescent paint is a good example of a popular lure colour that is often extremely effective in a wide range of environments. This emitted light in the green end of the spectrum has excellent water penetration, far better than fluorescent pink. A good example is the small TT Switchblades. These tiny little lures get repeatedly inhaled by really big flathead, a lot more than any other small lure I’ve used. Nearly all the really big lizards I’ve caught on blades have been on the chartreuse or fluoro pink models, and the principle of “small and bright” holds true. Why an 80cm plus lizard can be bothered chasing a lure the size of a guppy is beyond me, but these lures are obviously extremely effective. Sometimes I think they see the small bright lure as being part of a larger, more camouflaged creature.
White blades also work extremely well but they just don’t get the market penetration and most shops find them hard to sell. It is a case of lures needing to be made for the fishermen rather than the fish. Never ignore white.
Soft plastics are the main weapon of many estuary anglers, and while white is a popular colour in some places, it tends to be very underused. The Gulp four-inch Swimming Mullet in white is probably the most versatile soft plastic I’ve ever used. The range of species that eat these things is phenomenal. I’ve caught barra, flathead, bream, snapper, jacks, salmon and fingermark on these lures in situations where other lures got very few bites at all. Similarly, the white Squidgy Fish and white Slick Rigs are phenomenally successful lures. These are marketed as the “Drop Bear” colour. No one calls a white lure “white”!
In my mate Mitch Calcutt’s soft plastic box there are about 20 packs of white lures and one pack of gold, and nothing else. His dad, Ron, the founder of this magazine, put him onto white lures when he was a kid, and he hasn’t changed over 30 years later.
The problem with small and bright lures is that they often hook large fish too big for the terminals they carry. While a small or medium white skirt can be rigged with big hooks to cope with blue marlin, the heavy leader does reduce lure action a bit, and in the estuaries the tiny chartreuse blades we use carry very small trebles. Too much hook ruins the action, but there is always a degree of compromise. Softer rods and lots of patience are required to land big fish on small lures.
Regardless of what lure fishing situation you are in, always keep the “small and bright” option in the back of your mind when you aren’t getting the results you expect on your more conventional lures. It is surprising how often this works. And never ignore white lures. Fish love ’em!
