When suiting up on a new type of bait and sending it off into battle, it’s always good to choose the most colourful player in the team.
Now, this isn’t because Hilly has a passion for bright pink things or Dennis Rodman was his favourite baller, rather we like to limit the time it takes for us to become ‘bait competent’.
To accelerate this bait competency, all new native bait types, like wakebaits, swimbaits and glidebaits, we test with the brightest colour and in the clearest water we can find. While one swimbait may be similar to another, no two brands swim exactly the same.
By controlling these two variables – lure colour and water quality – we are able to considerably shorten the learning process.
After punching out a cast, it’s as simple as watching the bait react too different retrieve factors like speed, rod lifts and dips.
The bright lure makes it significantly easier to notice the degree at which the lure swims back on itself with the thrust of the rod tip, how much its action is affected by a flowing river or its rise rate through the water column on a fast crank.
This helps ‘train your brain’ to subconsciously ‘learn’ how the bait will move in the water when you can’t see it. We’ve found this particularly useful when chasing XOS cod on wakebaits at night and navigating them through the fast flows at the head of most pools.
So, while we’ll admit some bait colours are intended to catch more fishermen than fish, a bright bait has more advantages than you think.
