One of those bass sessions when a specific lure colour seemed to make all the difference

I wonder if we are in the same boat here? One day you feel that lure colour makes little difference, then the next day something different happens and we come away convinced that specific lure colours are actually the key to catching. A couple of days ago was one of those sessions where everything did indeed point to lure colour being THE deciding factor………………

I haven’t been out on the coast for a while because it’s been so flat, but we finally got a couple of days of bounce which happened to coincide with tide sizes I tend to prefer around here. A mate was totally weeded out the first day, but another lad I know had a bunch of fish and he was kind enough to “nudge” me towards fishing a specific area at a different state of tide that I more usually fish around there (a big thank you, I don’t know if you read my blog, but those messages were bloody kind). Weed was always going to be an issue, so we’d have to move around to find fishable water.

Anyway, Dave and I got down to the area and made our way towards the water. We had bright conditions but there was what I would call enough bounce to get me excited. As we began to get in amongst the rocks and gullies, Dave noticed lots of spider crab legs and shells and body bits all over the place. I mentioned how my girls have often snorkelled out and grabbed a couple of spider crabs to take home and cook up. Bass obviously eat spider crabs so it was good to see signs of a food source strewn about the place.

I can’t pretend that I gave it any more thought though as I rigged up a white Gravity Stick Paddletail on the 6/0 3g belly-weight weedless hook. My go-to if you like for a bit of bounce in bright conditions. I went right and Dave went left, and just as I started to fish I got a yelp over the radio to say fish on! It looked like a decent fish so I asked Dave to put the bass in a rockpool if he landed it, and I started to gingerly make my way across a lot of very slippery stuff to grab some photos. A great start to the session and obviously I asked Dave what lure he was using and so on.

As I said, I hadn’t given it much more thought, but Dave had straight away gone to one of his “Molt” coloured Morsetto paddletails from his Labrax Mafia brand - orange basically. Why orange? Because it matched the colour of the spider crab bits and pieces we had seen strewn about the place. “Nice one Dave, love the thinking”, and I carried on with my go-to white Gravity Stick Paddletail. A lure which was responsible for my biggest bass and a lure which I trust completely. When Dave then missed a bass but hooked up again not long after I obviously started to wonder about lure colour and whether it really was a thing that the bass in front of us were on the hunt for spider crabs. An orange lure doing the business when the potential food source which you know is out there happens to be a kind of orange as well. It came out later on that Dave had specifically made his “Molt” colour to imitate the spider crab colour. Love it.

I think Dave landed another bass not far from me at all, so I need to make a change here and see if it is actually the specific lure or lure colour which is making the difference. Could also be that he is quite simply fishing better than me, but I like to think I can get it done at least some of the time! I had a go with the colour of Berkley Cull Shad you can see above and I got smacked a couple of times but didn’t hook up.

So I had a rummage around and came up with this 13cm Slender Scoop Shad in the Smelt (orange) colour you can see above. I remember when I first tried this particular colour of Slender Scoop Shad in my local waters and loved it from the off because it caught me bass. Confidence breeds confidence, but I never made the (potential) connection between spider crabs and lure colour. I wanted a heavier belly weight weedless hook to give me more stability, but all I had with me was one of those Lure Factory Extra Wide Gape weedless hooks in a size 3/0 with a 10g belly weight. Lovely hooks I might add, but I prefer a 5/0 or 6/0 for the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad.

But the combination worked just fine, in fact it worked literally straight away. I changed to the Smelt colour 13cm Slender Scoop Shad rigged on a 3/0 10g Lure Factory Extra Wide Gape weedless hook and landed a bass immediately, then another one, plus a bunch of hits and misses, all after I changed the colour of my lure to more closely match the colour of paddletail that Dave was using and catching on. Of course there are potentially a few other factors involved here, but we ain’t fish and we see things as human beings. I don’t know if I’d have ended up catching bass if I had persisted with my white paddletail, but I do know that I did catch bass when I changed to a lure colour which closely matched one of the prevalent food sources. I grant you that a Slender Scoop Shad or Labrax Mafia Morsetto paddletail looks nothing like a spider crab, but I’m not a bass and I don’t know why they do what they do. You all have a good weekend and may plenty of lovely fish smash your lures, baits or flies……………..

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