The Red Scam - Believe It or Not!

This has nothing to do with American history, as in the Red Scare that took place amid fears of a Bolshevik revolution here in the early 1900s, and everything to do with recent trends in fishing tackle.The color red has become the hot ticket for everything from lines to hooks to splashes of color on lures. It’s the perfect union of marketing hype and fishermen’s gullibility. Red fishing line becomes invisible underwater, its makers say, and red hooks supposedly simulate a blood trail, thereby inciting attacks from predatory fish. If you’re buying into these claims, then I have a bridge I’d like to sell you, too. As you consider my offer, let’s take a closer look at this Red Scam.

Vanishing Act:Cajun Line (cajunline.com) became partly responsible for this trend when they started selling translucent-red nylon monofilament a few years ago. That line, along with their newer red-colored superbraid, becomes “virtually invisible” underwater, according to the company’s current advertising.

The theory is based on simple physics: As daylight penetrates into the water, different colors of the spectrum are naturally filtered out according to depth. Red is the first to disappear, usually at depths of 3 to 10 feet or a little more, depending on the water clarity. Blues and violets penetrate the deepest and might be visible as distinct hues as far down as 30 feet or more.

But here’s the rub: While the red color of the line disappears, the line itself does not. Suppose you go snorkeling while holding a small red ball. If you dive a little deeper, the red color will indeed start to fade, but the ball doesn’t suddenly become invisible. It just looks grey instead of red. If you go even deeper where all red is filtered out, the ball will look black.

That’s what happens with red monofilament, too. It appears as a translucent grey as red light wavelengths are filtered away. Invisible? Nope. Clear monofilament isn’t invisible either, but because it has no pigments it is less visible than its red competitors. Red line is easy to see above the surface, and so for some anglers it may be an advantage in bite detection. And Cajun does make a perfectly good line, which happens to be much better than the advertising lines they’re throwing at the same time.

Blood Duping: This one’s even better…or worse depending on how you look at it. Red hooks and red splotches of color on lure bodies are also popular right now. The color is used to represent a blood trail, a wounded baitfish body, or a bright flash of baitfish gills. Fishermen love the enhanced realism and buy such products by the handful.

Fish, on the other hand, just don’t think the way people do. No redfish, for example, is going to stare at red spots on a “bleeding” crankbait and deduce that it must represent a wounded baitfish. Redfish and other fish don’t reason; they just react. Shape, size, action, and — importantly — contrast in a lure’s color pattern all influence that reaction. Painted gills and “blood trail” hooks catch fisherman, not fish.

Field and Stream, October 2008 - written by The Honest Angler