"riverman" wrote in message
...
history snipped

I remember seeing either a TV show about a place where they test
artificial
lures. I think its the Rapala factory in Finland, but they have access to
a
lot of fish (trout, I think) from a hachery. They made a large oval
fishtank
where they can troll their lures around. They introduce 3 or 4 fish that
had
never been used before, and trolled several lures around to see what
worked
and what didn't. They recorded how long each fish followed the lure, and
how
many strikes each lure received. Then they released the fish to the river,
got a few new ones, and repeated the experiment. They were able to
ascertain
what shape lures worked, determine the effect of color, speed, depth, etc.

Ummm, the worst part is that I cannot remember if they decided that color
played a role, but if anyone else saw this show maybe they can
remember...?

1n the 1950's a professor at the University of Oklahoma in Norman ran a
color attraction study using largemouth bass. He used a large sheet iron
stock tank and placed several bass in it and casted the same topwater lure
(Jitterbug I think) but with different colors. He changed the bass in the
tank, rotated the colors and repeated the process. Red came out as the
number one color regardless of the cast and was significantly greater than
any other color. In other words they caught more bass on red lures
regardless of the cast into the tank.

Has anyone seen any more recent color studies?

Good luck!
John