Gold Spinners

[Memory Maker]

Who uses Gold spinners for Perch, Pickerel etc. what conditions do you use them or do you just use silver spinners

[J.A. Veil]

I use primarily Bignose spinnerbaits in 1/8-oz size. Stu makes them with green and chartreuse blades as well as silver or gold. I seem to do best with the silver and gold blades (I don't see any difference between those two colors). The similar feathered spinnerbaits I used to get from Woody Tillery all had silver blades.

Occasionally when targeting redfish or other larger predators, I use a Redfish Magic spinner. As far as I know they all come in gold color.

[bignose]

90% of the time, I use a green chartreuse and white skirt with a gold blade. I am very particular about using Baitfish Emulator Flash (available thru Bass Pro) as the primary skirt material. In photo #1 the skirt is made from 3 layers: White Krystal flash, Light Chartreuse Krystal Flash and Chartreuse Green Emulator Bait Flash

I have experimented with silver blades and the diamond textured style blade originally pioneered by Woody and found that they didn't make any significant difference. I make spinners with them for sale, but honestly those are more for the fisherman than the fish. Lol
Woody used natural feathers and Krystal Flash trim on his lures.

In very clear fresh water, I find that silver blades are a little too bright, and spook fish off.

In stained or turbid water I will go to a Green and Chartreuse striped blade. I do occasionally use a double bladed lure, with a #0 and a #3 blade in dark water. That big Yellow Perch and the Pickerel hit double bladed jigs like in picture 2.

I increase the size of the single blade lure from the usual #2 to a #3 under these conditions, as these blades put out a stronger pulse as they are retrieved and ride a little higher in the water column on the retrieve.

[Mark]

I use a variety of colors.

Here's a look at a sample of the spinner blades from the supply I use when making my own lures and a few of my finished perch lures:

Blades.jpg

Honestly, I have yet to find a color that won't work.

Yesterday, I caught white perch at Goodhands on three different spinner blade colors: silver, red and white, and solid white. I changed colors only because I lost the first two lures. A fish took one. A snag took another. I just reached into my box and grabbed another paying little attention to the color. Like John Harbaugh of the Ravens says, "Next man up."

The popular convention is bright day, bright lure. Dark day, dark lure. Yesterday was overcast and any color worked. I also caught stripers on black, chartreuse, white, and pink paddletails and surface lures in black, orange and white. The stripers wore out the paddletails so I had to change them. I changed topwater colors to see if color mattered. it didn't.

I acknowledge that fish may have a color preference on certain days. We've all had days where our buddies radio that they are catching on a certain color paddletail, so we switch accordingly. But I firmly believe the noise a lure makes and its shape and size are the most important factors in its effectiveness most of the time.