Fishing Lure colors or color ?

[Travis C.]

I am organizing my gear for the upcoming fishing season and stumbled on an interesting question. This is mainly dealing with crankbaits and to make it not so confusing...

Would you rather have several depths of a crankbait in your tackle bag of the same color or several with each one being a different color?

The single color one can be a productive color like sexy shad, TN shad, brown craw or whatever you want.

I am tired of keeping all my stuff in the boat.

[bd-]

I think depth makes more difference than color. Just my opinion.

bd

[Travis C.]

The issue for my crankbaits lies in I have a box of deep fat raps, box of regular fat raps, box of shad raps, box of normans, box of rebel wee r's, box of wiggle warts, box of poes, box of bagley's and a box of misc. All have varying degree of depths and shades of colors.

How do I narrow it to just (2) for my tackle bag?

What colors should I have a mix of? Shad, Craw and Chartruse of some sort? I am worried that now everything is not at arms reach a color or style will not be in arms reach since I am downsizing.

Essentially what are the have to haves in a cranking box or boxes.

[bd-]

I don't know. But whichever way you go, after you downsize, take your rejects to Fly South and sell them on Ebay for store credit.

bd

[Travis C.]

I could never get rid of the "spare" stuff. Every now an then I may sell a little. A friend of ours had his boat cleaned out at his house of all places. They took everything from electronics to all tackle. I helped him out with 8 or so rod combos and couple tackle boxes of lures. But that was the most I have ever parted with.

My grandfather left me a storage building of tackle when he passed from our days on the water. Some days its a bad thing being hard to justify buying anything new but others I see it as he took care of me long term.

That was part of the appeal of flyfishing...we didn't do that. Actually got to buy stuff.

[Travis C.]

I worked on it on and off few hours today. Think I am content with it now and don't feel anything is a need that's left out.

Thanks.

[TNtransplant08]

Thats a toughie. What you end up doing?

If it was me, I probably would have kept 3-4 colors that I'm confident in and have one each for each depth range. Probably still end up with more than you want eh? For me, its been red craw, sexy shad, and white/chart. My favorite color for the red eye shad is "tomato", its has a red craw back with a chart. belly. Wish they had that color for their crankbaits.

[Travis C.]

I ended up going with the single color per model/depth. There are enough different cranks in the same depth range to have pretty standard colors in each with adding a couple special circumstance colors.

The red is a good color just not for me. I keep giving it a chance though.

One box is shallow-medium depth with a couple slots of floating and suspending stick baits. One box is medium-deep.

I have a couple dedicated ledge boxes that all dig in the 15+ft range so there are only a few in the deep box just in case. As summer gets here the ledge boxes will go in the boat.

[bd-]

Needs a couple X-Raps and maybe a 5" Redfin for the topwater bite.

bd

[Travis C.]

Originally Posted by bd-

Needs a couple X-Raps and maybe a 5" Redfin for the topwater bite.

bd

I don't have many Redfin's just a few smokey joe colored ones. May have to add one in there.

Unfortunately X-Raps came out too late. I can't seem to justify buying those $$$ things with so many rapalas already. They look pretty sweet though.

[jad2t]

Originally Posted by bd-

I think depth makes more difference than color. Just my opinion.

bd

That's what she said

[bd-]

Originally Posted by Travis C.

I don't have many Redfin's just a few smokey joe colored ones. May have to add one in there.

When I bass fished more, I used to always carry one rod rigged with a 5" silver redfin in the summer. Fishing around rock bluffs early and late, if I saw a shady spot I'd pitch the redfin in, let the ripples die, and give it a jerk. If there was a bass around, it would get blasted every time. It's a very good topwater lure that doesn't get as much credit for bass as it should.

Unfortunately X-Raps came out too late. I can't seem to justify buying those $$$ things with so many rapalas already. They look pretty sweet though.

They are tough to beat in the jerkbait category. And if you're trout fishing, well... I see you have a few Rattlin' Rogues in your box - if you try the X-Raps, you might just replace the Rogues.

bd

[Travis C.]

Originally Posted by bd-

When I bass fished more, I used to always carry one rod rigged with a 5" silver redfin in the summer. Fishing around rock bluffs early and late, if I saw a shady spot I'd pitch the redfin in, let the ripples die, and give it a jerk. If there was a bass around, it would get blasted every time. It's a very good topwater lure that doesn't get as much credit for bass as it should.
bd

May have to give it a try. I don't fish the stick type baits very much unless it is trout.

Originally Posted by bd-

They are tough to beat in the jerkbait category. And if you're trout fishing, well... I see you have a few Rattlin' Rogues in your box - if you try the X-Raps, you might just replace the Rogues.
bd

I liked how they are made. The only one I have ever used was a black/silver with maybe a red tail. Some jack wagon left a bunch of the empty boxes down at Thayer Wilson. Luckily for me one box of trash he left still had the lure in it.

Nice weight and can really cast them. But a couple thousand dollars worth of Rapalas won't justify another $7 one. I might be able to slide one in though.

[jad2t]

Originally Posted by bd-

They are tough to beat in the jerkbait category. And if you're trout fishing, well... I see you have a few Rattlin' Rogues in your box - if you try the X-Raps, you might just replace the Rogues.

bd

You like the X-raps? They have some very nice looking trout patters, I'm thinking about buying one of the rainbow trout patters to use when I'm after big browns this year. I have a 4" Glass Ghost pattern X-rap that I haven't used yet but I'm planning to use it quite a bit coming up...especially below Center Hill after a striper. Have you had any success with that lure or heard of others doing well with it?