Someone please explain this to me?.

Bob,

I wondered that same thing, but a couple of the local pros I know have commented on using red hooks on topwaters baits. One has made an agreement to go out and test head to head on identical baits and lines with me to compare bronze, chrome, red, and excalbur rotating hooks when we find a good topwater bite. Thats Dave Willhide, one of your local pro staff. He swears the red hooks make a huge difference. He also likes the bleeding shad pattern SWs.

From my own experience, I have caught many bluegill on bare hooks. It seems I recall that gold salmon egg hooks got more hits than traditional bronze/black hooks when fished without bait amoung aggressive gills.

Now comes the part where I may be out in left field because it is my own opinion. I think in clear water where red can be seen it might be more visible. I wondered about in deep water. I had heard that reds turned black underwater when you got down deeper or if the water was particularly stained or muddy. I know that several weeks ago I was fishing a tournament with Craig Johnson, and he was fishing a deep diving red crankbait in very stained water. He caught fish all day by cranking and cranking and cranking. When I asked one of my fishing mentors about it he promptly pulled one of his crank baits out of the box and spray painted it black.

Perhaps, the red hooks have a two fold affect. Bleeding Bait (Daichii name) affect when in clear water, black affect for visibility when in deep or murky water.

TJ with Daichii has reccomended bleeding bait hooks over other hooks they make on almost every application I have asked him about. I do like the affect of fishing one of Gilbert's (Mesa Tackle) waterdogs on a Bleeding Bait butt dragger hook. It takes a strong hook set even with a 5/O hook. The way it drops in the water is so fishable though. It can easily be fished as a slow jerk or swim bait, or dragged across a spawning bed to tick off a big cow bass. For that last option Ild like a little heavier weight on that butt dragger to hold it down in the eggs, but it really has a nice affect.

By the way. A friend of mine weighed in a 7.15 lb LM caught using one of those waterdogs, and he claims he had one almost twice that size break off on him using the same bait.

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Bob La Londe
www.YumaBassMan.com
All about fishing in Yuma, Arizona
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"Bob Rickard" wrote in message m...
I must be really stupid, so will somebody please explain this to me: small diameter wire hooks draw strikes when colored red, while line of similar diameter becomes invisible when colored red. My BS alert is screaming! Is it possible that somebody might be funnin' us?
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Bob Rickard
www.secretweaponlures.com
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