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| Just about every lure I have has an orange belly.When I started musky fishing all I used was a gold 7 in. Rapala with a white belly and caught lots of fish on it in all kinds of water.I got a gold flash Twitcher to go back to that color and its been a killer.This Winter I painted up some BabyDepthRaiders and some ShallowRaiders in the same color to see how they work.After reading the black at night debate and Jason saying he likes white bellies I'm going to give them alot of work this year because he's the expert on color.Is there some reason for orange bellies or is it just what we all buy? |
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| Down here K most peeps use the black/silver or black/gold w/ white bellies...most of the baits used here w/ orange are for smallies, probably as a crawfish imitator...I'm thinking most natural fish have a lighter belly w/ the exception of carp...good question!![:sun:] |
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| The muskie looks up all the time,so the underside of the bait is improtant IF the water clarity is good enough for the fish to see the bait. Orange is made from Red and Yellow, so it is significant whether the base is one or the other as the water prism effect takes out the longer, or red band quickly.
If the paint is red with yellow added, the bait will be dark grey to black. If the paint is yellow with red added, the bait will be lighter grey.
Keep in mind there is also a 30 degree 'window' that allows for the fish to see some of the profile, so if that is available, as in calmer water, the side colors come into play.
Also, the direct overhead view of the lure will put the bottom in shadow, like an airplane going overhead.
Tons of variables... |
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| How would we know what base color each lure manufacturer uses?If they show up either black ,dark grey or light grey,Why not just have black bellies on some and white on others?I also painted up some all black with a white stripe on the top and covered with a pearl clearcoat. |
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| First, let me say that I think it is NOT very often that a musky is looking straight up at your lure from directly below. Most of the strikes I generate the fish approached from the side where the profile (sides) of the lure are highly visible. Secondly, let me say that I feel the belly color is more important on a lure where you use an erratic retrieve and can expose the belly color to direct (or more) light by making the lure roll onto its side. Thus, belly color can be used to produce flash.
I personally prefer white bellies... but use lures with all kinds of belly colors, including orange. I agree with Worrall about needing to know how the orange paint was manufactured to fully understand what it will do under various light conditions. When I paint my own lures, I like to use a white base coat, a light coat of chartruese, topped off with a very light coat of flo. orange. This produces kind of a pumpkin orange color that is very bright and YELLOW based. Is this necessary... probably not... but it gives me confidence.
As for why orange bellies are so popular... I'm not sure. I'm going to guess that it originated from the PERCH pattern and the orange was used to represent the orange colored fins.
This is an interesting question. What does everyone else think? |
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| If the muskie is on the bottom in rest mode, and the average body depth of a 20# muskie is about 6" ( fairly close), and the depth of the water is 6', the field of view of a lure 6" down would equate to 5 times the body height of the fish.(if one was to compare my height to a comparable scale, the object would then be 30' in the air) From more than that distance unless the water clarity is very good, the fish will not see the lure at all and will rely on other sensory input until within visual range, many times only 3 feet or so. In any case, the color, unless the light penetration is very high, will be washed by the water column prism effect and suspended particulate quite a bit. Light penetration angle has a large effect on the equation, too.
Given the field of view the muskie has, there are about a thousand variables as to the position of the lure when the fish actually is able to see it( if it ever can) during the attack process. The fish will ALWAYS try to
approach the lure from below as they cannot see down at all. My experience tells me the bait has to be above the fish to be effective, and that trolling patterns need to be 3' or more above for optimum coverage unless the fish are dead flat on the bottom. At 10' in clear water at high noon, the red portion of the spectrum is gone. It appears as black, again addressing the last post I put up. If any section of the bait is orange, it is necessary to find out how the orange was created to determine the contrast scalability of the lure under the conditions it is being used.
The stereoscopic field of view begins about 5" from the direct center of the fish's nose, and extends in a triangle out to the limits of clarity and light penetration. A big fish can't se a lure 5" DIRECTLY in front of it's nose because of the position of it's eyes.(Draw an X from the sides of the fishes head out past it's nose, top view; where the X intersects past the nose is the beginning of the stereo FOV) 1' in front, the stereoscopic field is very narrow indeed. Above the fish and 1' in front, the FOV is better.
Too summarize--most lures are orange on the bottom because they sell better that way. They are pretty, and look good, so we buy them, anthropomorprhising our way to a totally overloaded tackle box. |
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| I think the orange belly is painted more for the fisherman than the fish. I do some custom painting of my Twitchers when I am asked to do so. Believe me I've done some really wierd color patterns over the years. I'll leave the color theory up to the guys that know alot more about it than me.
TR < |
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| I agree with TR!!
Steve, my point was simple geometry. If a muskie is 6 feet below your lure and 6 feet off to the side, it is 8.5 feet away from your lure looking at it from a 45 degree angle. From a 45 degree angle, you can easily see the sides of the lure. It also is at a perfect angle to reflect light from above, so you can also see the color and flash very easily. If the water clarity is such that you can see bottom in 6 feet, what you are actually seeing is what a musky can see at 12 feet (the light penetrated down to the bottom and reflected back up to your eye). Therefore, you may THINK a musky will have a hard time seeing your lure from distances greater than 6 feet since that is all the deeper you can see bottom..... but the musky can see at least 12 feet... if not more. Thus, I think visual attraction is a very strong stimulous..... and the most effective for LONG DISTANCES. The lateral line and the ability to FEEL your lure is a short range sense in my opinion. That is why I like to discuss color.
As for the angle of the sun... it doesn't really matter much. Ambient light is enough to produce color. Toss in some waves and you can easily exceed the 30 degree angle requirement for direct light to penetrate the water surface. So, at high noon I feel a lure can still be highly visible.
I think this discussion veered off course a little... but TR pretty much nailed the orginal question. Baits are painted to look pretty to the fisherman. However, I still feel we can be SMART in how we use those "pretty" baits. Considering all this stuff we talked about, you can see it is a complicated subject that has WAY too many factors affecting it to be consistent in color selection. Thus, our boxes need to be filled with lots and lots of different color schemes for us to "trial and error" with on a daily basis. |
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| Good point jlong. It is a common misperception (hear it all the time) that the secchi depth is the depth of light penetration. It is actually double the secchi depth.
Zach |
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| This leads directly to the fact that given poor to no visability, rendering a bait hard to see, that vibration/noise/silouette/action play a major role in the overall picture...I firmly believe in the old adage that even a blind squirrel finds its nuts....I think the above is more important than color but must admit that if a color strikes me, then I'll buy it for sure...after all confidence is important + I like to watch stuff go through the water sometimes...plus peeps say "hey dude, cool looking bait!"....+ I say "yep it is isn't it".....[:sun:] |
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| I wouldn't argue in your example that the visibility of the bait (using our vision system) would be somewhat a side view from that distance IF the visibility under the surface allows that, the fish was at that angle facing the bait, and the light penetration and available ambient light was at the correct angle to produce a reflection off the side of the lure.. In many cases, excellent diving visibility under the water at high noon is 3 feet because of particulate. Also, the prism effect takes out the color red from that distance pretty well, from my diving experience. A coke can in ten feet at high noon will appear black and silver to a diver at that depth. Those are some of the variables I was talking about. The point I was trying to make is the lure bottom may not appear orange from that distance.
I spent quite a bit of time fooling around in different lakes looking at the lures I fish with at different depths, and found that there were few times I could clearly discern colors as the lure went by.
Most waters I fish are not clear enough to see the bottom in 5 feet at high noon, and frequently are too cloudy to see the bottom in 3 most of the time. Poor waters to dive in because the visibility is so poor.I was more than aware of the secchi disk light penetration reading meaning, from study with Dr. Mora Gage.
Also take ino account the poor focusing ability the muskie is afflicted with, and contrast, not the color the bait appears to us in the boat becomes the important factor, which was the point of my last post.
The last thing I said agrees with TR, too![:bigsmile:] |
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| I'm not much of a color guy, but orange and lures containing orange have always been good to me. Here's some of my thinking about this.
First I'm not real sure about muskies, but I've seen several studies on walleye, and these studies show that the rods and cones of a walleye eye are very sensative to the color orange. Both Steve and jlong talk a lot about how colors appear and dissapear (blue lasts the longest, red fades the soonest, as water depth increases), but not much about the fishes adaptations to overcome the problems that occur when colors fade.
If fish where to only eat fish that where blue they would probably have a tough time finding something to eat in fresh water. The orange hue (perch, walleye, carp, redhorse, and quite a few others) is fairly common in nature, and if you are going to find something to eat it would be a good color to be sensitive to.
As far as I can tell orange is one of the best colors available on the dark waters of the LOTWs. I think there is a little more to it than fisherman's preferance.
Doug Johnson |
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| Good point DougJ. I agree that there is more to it. The question is, how much of it do we REALLY need to know to be effective fisherman?
For us to understand what exactly a musky sees probably isn't even relavant. There have been conflicting studies done on the muskie. Some studies suggest that muskies do NOT have cones in the blue spectrum.... which means they are color blind and favor the red-yellow spectrum. Other studies suggest they have the typcical cone arrangement similar to humans with three cones.... which means they see just like us. Lastly, muskies have way more rods than cones, which means they are more sensitive to light intensity (night vision) and shades (contrast) than they are color. So, throw in the textbook physics that explains how water "filters" color and then cap it off with we aren't even sure of the exact cone arrangement in muskies (could even be different based on their environment.... clear water versus stained water?) and we don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to predicting what a musky actually sees. Throw in the "yellowing" affect with age of the eye lense and that changes the way color is percieved as well. Consider the infinite environmental changes and establishing strict guidelines for color selection of our lures becomes IMPOSSIBLE.
BUT, you can't argue with success and experience. A friend of mine, Rody Brekke, has been around the block a few dozen times and has more experience than one can dream of... and he has some interesting stuff to say about the color ORANGE. His experiences have really challenged some of my beliefs and had forced me to re-evaluate my thought process about color.
From a physics point of view, ORANGE is the Jack of all Trades. In bright conditions it is a highly visible color and has superior contrast with the blue sky. Then, in low light conditions or in deep water (filtering effect) orange is an excellent DARK color since red is so quickly removed. In fact, in low light conditions (overcast days?) orange can be a real winner because it is in essence a "dark" bait that is still pretty visible to the fisherman for good lure control. But, for this to be effective, the orange needs to be on the TOP of the lure. Thus, I can still have my WHITE belly preference and when I want orange in my presentation I simply use an orange bait. Oh yeah, toss in the idea that a tannic stain TRANSMITS red light and an orange lure is almost turbo charged in the classic coffee stain water. Kind of like why chartruese is so effective in an algae bloom (yellow-green light is reflected by all the particulate matter increasing its abundance).
So, then how do we explain the time tested success story of orange in October? Well, perhaps the low angle of the sun is no different that the "low light" scenario described above.
If we are that worried about color, then we should simply use the most natural looking colors we can produce. Its when we want to maximize visibility (whether it looks realistic or not) that we become more interested in the "science" behind color. Bottom line, I keep it simple. I assess the current conditions (water clarity and illumination) and take a guess at what color will reflect the dominant light source best. If that isn't a concern... I go with any dark color I choose.... even black.
Maybe this is why my good buddy Oneida Esox does so well sticking with Black and White color combos? He's always got the bases covered with that pattern and never has to stress out about color. No information overload. |
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| Yep, I try to keep it simple also, I go with orange!
Doug Johnson |
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| Thanks for all the great responses.The only problem now is my brain hurts. |
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| DougJ.... Ok, if you go with orange..... is it on top, bottom, or is the entire lure orange (ha ha)?
If I had to choose between an orange back or an orange belly... I'd take the orange back (top).
Just adding more confusion to a simple question[:halo:] |
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| Been on LVD and Palmer/Tenderfoot a few times when Bengal tiger was IT.Nothing else would get a sniff. |
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| Jlong and Doug,
Exactly what I was fishing for...fish/buy what you find works well. I use Black baits and White baits alot, with a good mixture of Fl. Orange and Chartruese. Orange is important to me on the sides/bottom, same with chartruese. Black is always OK, never a good or bad time for that for me.
Jlong is absolutely right in my opinion, we will never be able to tell exactly what the fish is seeing, so confidence baits due to a high success ratio seems to be the answer.
I also was very interested out of Doug's comments on blue, as I have thought about that for a long time. Seems the Bass guys for a while were saying deep water=blue baits. Put an orange or black stripe on them, and they are OK, I suppose![:bigsmile:]
What I have always tried to do is figure out the background the fish is dealing with, and contrast the bait to the background as best as I can guess it. ( Top layer of the water column= Dark day, Dark Lure/Bright Day, Bright Lure, has worked for me)
I never worried too much about the eyes, spots, lines, photo finishes, or details, just the general contrast the lure provides.
Somehow, when one of my bait's finish begins to need work, it ends up spraypaited black. |
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| Some great discussion. However, I have to say Mr. Worral's statement: "The fish will ALWAYS try to approach the lure from below as they cannot see down at all.", is an error in perception. I think he's giving them a -> "human w/ a broken neck attribute". Yes Steve-> I agree they're dumber than a box of rocks. Until someone like Sponge proves us wrong. [:0]
Some observations from watching a lot of reef fish go about their daily life while scuba diving.
The medium that fish live in allows them to orient their bodies in virtually any plane. That's why they generally have all those little fins. This means a Muskie can look down by orienting it's body in a head down plane. Why would it do so? How about lateral line stimulation? Even with it's body in a horizontal plane the Muskie can use its lateral line to detect potentail prey/bait moving under it, even to the point of knowing which general angle to orient too. So I think the Muskie can take a visual peek at that potential meal. It also makes sense they can attack from above or from any angle they choose.
Back to the color discussion. Most coloration we human's see in fish is camoflage for particular environmental conditions. Have you ever wondered why the majority of sharks are grey? Much good discussion has already been had vis-a-vis,color's + water depth, clarity, light and dark back/light belly. I like what jlong say's about flash, i.e., as the bait rolls on it's side it's flash of either light or dark is important to the visual presentation needed to trigger the strike. All these are some things we can use to improve our sucess ratio's. I'm only aware of one lure maker presently offering reversed top/belly colors, -> Brian Susler's "Punisher's. His cisco blue is probably the first bait I'm going to christen this year. Are there any others out there with reversed color?
Al Warner
www.icantplayfindmyfoot.com |
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| Al, I have had several guys order Twitchers painted upside down. It is the dying bait thing, I believe they want the bait to look like an easy target.It is great that guys are always thinking!
TR <[:bigsmile:] |
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| KSauers, I really like TR's Bengal pattern.... but absolutely LOVE his SUNBURST. Bengal has a chartruese belly with black lace.... the Sunburst doesn't have any lace.... but has my personal favorite.... a WHITE belly!
Throw in the fact that if I beg and whine long enough, I can get TR to paint other lures (Ernies, Jakes, Mantas, Reef Hawgs, etc) with his awesome patterns... and you have one happy daddy. THANKS TR!!
I think having lots of cool looking lures is part of the FUN of this sport. Take that away from us and fishing isn't what it is supposed to be. If all we needed were solid black baits, what fun would that be? And, then I wouldn't need a buddy like TR to paint my baits... cause even I can paint a lure all black (ha ha). |
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| What real fish that swims in freshwater has an orange belly anyway? |
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| Daggone dude!!! Sunfish + carp here![:sun:]
** TR, cna you paint one backwards...the head at the tail, the tail at the head etc. + has anyone ever asked you to paint one side one color + the other side another color...that might work depending on the angle of the sun...[:sun:] |
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| My sunfish and carp have white bellys.... but I have caught walleyes in northern Canada with yellow bellys.[;)] |
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| Hey Sponge, Haven't painted any backwards or different pattern on opposite sides. But now you got me thinkin'. And I know JLong will be thinkin'TOO!! I'll just sit back and wait for his call! HA! HA![:p] |
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| Let's blow the dust off this one....
With all this talk about lure color and how the water environment influences it, how preyfish coloration is designed to function as camoflage, what a musky can see (based on biology of the eye and the physics of light), etc. etc. etc.
What are you going to paint on all your beat up lures this winter? This post seems to have a bias towards ORANGE. Is it justified?
jlong |
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| I try and go with what is "NATURAL"
I don't know about you guy's, but most fish I see have a "WHITE" belly.
The bottom line is lures are made to catch fishermen not fish!!!!
I don't care what color a lure is, if that fish is in a postitive and hungry mode, "WHAM"!!!!!![:p]
Dont get me wrong, we "ALL" have our certain confidence lures that we go to, NO MATTER WHAT COLOR THEY ARE!!!![;)] |
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| WOW.....my eyes are tired!
Awesome info...
Donnie [:bigsmile:] [:bigsmile:] |
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| Jason Smth,
There IS a freshwater fish with an orange belly. I saw a fellow fishing on the outdoor channel last year and they were in one of the Northwestern States fishing for trout. Now I came in on the middle of the show so I have no idea what the names of the trout is or what State they where in. It had a brown back, yellow sides with a wide bright orange stripe on the latteral line and with a bright orange belly. I had never seen one before but this fish was pretty and caught my eye. That was the combo I used to paint my Millenium Tiger only I added the black swept back bars and glitter to it for even more contrast.
Does anyone up there in the Northwest have any idea what kind of or name of that trout? I sure would like to know. I have a book on different species of tourt and when ( IF 0 I ever get time would like to try to duplicate a couple of them as there are some I have never seen before and are pretty.
No I'm not crazy, [:knockout:] I know what I saw. [:0] ..
Jlong, does this thread mean I can paint ALL the triple D's in orange?? better send a bunch of them, I'm a gonna like that. [:bigsmile:]
By the way, The Triple D's were shipped out yesterday so they are on their way my man.
[:p] [:bigsmile:] [:sun:] [:praise:]
Just love these little things. [;)] |
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| jason, over here perch have orange fins (except the back fin) and very often they have a white belly that is covered with fine orange dots. Hence, spraying the entire belly orange is a good idea. I only do this on two patterns: perch and firetiger (which is a souped up version of a perch as far as I'm concerned). |
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