Lure Colors Sometimes Can Be Fickle

Evidently, the "river perch" Slug-Go is out of production,
because I can't find it on the Internet. This "mahi mahi" color,
however, is similar.

At least that's my take on the situation. For example, I remember one year back in the '80s or '90s when a Slug-Go in "river perch" color was introduced. It was a chartreuse and blue concoction, as I recall. Anyway, I bought a package of them just to find out if they'd catch any fish, and I'm here to tell you that after just a couple of trips, I hit every store in town, buying up every package of 'em I could find.

I seemingly had the corner on the market until one evening when an old fishin' buddy stumbled across me as I was snatching the last of several packages off the peg at a local store. Naturally, being one of those inquisitive types, he wanted to know why I had such a keen interest in that particular color. I could have lied--you know, like maybe telling him I was buying them for a friend from out of town--but my conscience wouldn't allow me to do that.

Instead, I just told him the truth. I also let him have one of the packages I had in my hand basket, and for the rest of that year, I ran into the same friend nearly every time I visited one of the local tackle stores, or took a day off and went fishing. He was like a bad shadow--I couldn't shake him. In the meantime, we were doing one bang-up job of keeping those river perch Slug-Go's between the two of us; we also both were catching a bunch of fish every time we hit the water with them.

At season's end, we both squirreled away our stashes, confident that we finally had found the secret to catching bass almost at will--I'm here to tell you the fishing was just that good with these baits. We were certain that, come spring, we'd pick up right where we had left off.

You can imagine our joint disappointment when spring finally arrived, and we brought our stashes out of hiding, only to see what had been a winner turn into a dud. It was as though the fish were thumbing their noses at those river perch Slug-Go's. I'm not sure what my buddy ever did with all the ones he had. However, I ended up giving away a lot of mine.

I've experienced similar results with other colors over the years, too, but I never repeated the mistake I made of buying every one in town.

The one color that has remained a steady producer for me over the years is firetiger. Very few trips to the water pass without my tying on at least one lure in this color. My overall philosophy, though, for choosing lure colors for a day's fishing always has been and probably always will be: "bright colors on bright days, dark colors on dark days."

Here are the links to a couple other viewpoints about color selection that I found on the Internet:

http://www.bassresource.com/beginner/Choosing_Colors_selection.html

http://www.sportsmansguide.com/Outdoors/Subject/SubjectRead.aspx?sid=14&aid=175345&type=T

These are the links to a couple videos on the same subject matter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjKcFcaT2NM

http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-videos/choose-lure-colors.html

If none of these suggestions work, you always have the option of turning your tacklebox upside down and trying everything. I've never quite gone that far, but there have been lots of days when the area around my pedestal seat looked like a war zone at the end of a day.