Emerald shiners in the wild are pretty minnows. They get their name from the iridescent flashes of emerald green the scales give while moving thru the water. When they are spawning the males can have a thin pinkish line along the lateral line. I won't even try that pinkish hue along the line.
You find three variations of minnows here. The colors at each end are made with very small amounts of baby bass and emerald green X2 colors in 3 ounces of plastic. This mix has some green hi lite to make the color bounce a little as well as some emerald .015 glitter. There is even a very slight wash of black in there. The baits with the smoke lateral line tame the brightness of this particular mix and would be my answer IF I were going to use this color to match what you're after.
The three baits smack in the middle of the pile without the smoke line and appearing darker would be what I'd go for in trying to mimic the real shiner. I'd probably throw a smoke line in there as well....I'm sorry I didn't for this picture. This color is a medium smoke to which I stirred in just a very wee bit of chartreuse. Then I added green hi lite and emerald green glitter, .015.
I'd be hard to sway away from the smoke green color.
The two greener baits are a rich green that leans toward emerald but lacks in any blue strong enough to really pull it any further in the direction of true emerald. As mentioned, the bait using this green and with the line would be my choice between the two. The smoke line helps to rein in some of the bright green. The picture doesn't show them moving in the sunlight but the way the colors shift and the way the mood of the green color changes is unreal. The smoke is strong enough to look like a common minnow . Move that bait slightly and things just go into action, just like they do in the water. I'm sure that some more black could pull the smoke more toward a dark minnow color. The amount of green hi lite could be scaled back to allow more transparency of the smoke color. The glitter is about right. If I did anything with the glitter it would be to split the total amount with black being 50% and the green the remaining 50%.
I hope this helps.
