Fishing Breakthrough or Industry Gimmick?

“Bass quickly learn to avoid or ignore something after attacking but not receiving a reward of food. And they retain that knowledge for months. Since these test fish aren’t cheap, we initially hoped to keep them and reuse them for various experiments. Even after three months, the number of bites on a type of lure was suppressed.

“If bass have been tested on crankbaits, we can use them again in worm or jig experiments, but no more with cranks. And bass used in worm tests can be reused in crankbait experiments but not with softbaits.” No wonder it can be so hard to get bites out on the lake some days.

“If bass so quickly learn to reject a hookless lure, a greater negative response is likely for fish that are hooked, landed, and released,” he says. “Theoretically, if you had a lake with heavy fishing pressure and all anglers were using silver or bronze hooks on their worm rigs and hardbaits, red hooks might offer the advantage of novelty. After being conditioned to avoid objects with silver or bronze hooks, red might work better.” Conversely, where red hooks have become widely popular, bass might become conditioned to avoid them and better results might come with bronze.

“But that scenario presumes that bass actually see hooks and associate them with the experience,” Jones points out.”If fish don’t get a clear sensory image of something, they can’t form a memory trace and become conditioned to it, one way or another. Their visual separation of hooks from the body of a moving crankbait is unlikely. It’s all just one image to them.”

Using red hooks on a dropshot or float rig in clear water might seem to bring the likeliest advantage, if hook color remained identifiable and bass had formed a search image for wirelike red objects. According to Jones, this is a stretch, unless fish had taken to a diet of bloodworms or other skinny creatures.

Red Lures

Jones notes, however, that bass might learn to key on red after being rewarded by attacks on objects of that color. In lakes where reddish-color crayfish are a dominant prey, for example, bass might be in the habit of perusing the bottom for similar objects. “I can imagine situations where reddish crawfish imitations such as softbaits or jig-and-craw combos might work better than other colors,” Jones says.

“Where bass feed heavily on a preferred item, they can develop a strong visual search image for that favored food. The search image includes characteristics such as motion and speed as well as color and size. But the idea of bass generalizing colors across lure types, for example attacking red jerkbaits or rattlebaits because they’re accustomed to eating reddish crawfish, seems implausible. They do not think like that.”

Pro anglers often use and recommend red lures in spring, when pre-spawn bass are thought to feed on crawfish. And I’ve caught plenty of big ones on red cranks, rattlebaits, and even spinnerbaits at that time. Cases of red Rat-L-Traps and other baits sold at tackle shops from Alabama to Texas speak to their effectiveness.

But Jones adds a note of caution. “Anglers are quick to come to conclusions without enough data to justify them. Say you go fishing and try a greenish lure and catch nothing. You switch to blue and catch a couple. Then a red version brings a couple lunkers. You might well conclude that bass really like red, that color made all the difference in your catch.

“That result could well be due to random error, the reason we apply rigorous statistics to the field tests we conduct with Berkley baits under product development. The angler might have come upon a group of bass after fishing through unproductive water. Those fish might have struck a green or blue lure as readily.