Glow question?

[mrex]

Does color affect the glow?

Do you like to do entire bait or just the tail?

Noticed adding a lot of glitter kind of breaks up the glow.

[pjmcla]

Ctom is the expert here.  But; here are my observations. Adding color will effect the glow. The more opaque you make the color -- the less the glow.
There are glow powders in several colors; some have a  stronger glow than others.  Some do just the tail; others do the entire bait.  Some even do the bait one glow color and the tail a different glow color  .   I have not done too many; mainly for night fishing.  Have thought about it and made a few 3 & 3.5 inch carrots for deeper water cloudy conditions ( not tested yet ).
Quite a few years ago I did some glow grubs for night fishing salt water piers and flats.  They did very well. 

[mrex]

Did a couple of core shots this morning with a glow center and tail.
Then I figured out easier to hand pour top and bottom do a center shot
thru to the tail.

Wanted to get the purple glow but its to expensive like $80 for 2 ozs.

[RonDon]

Yep you will go broke buying the colored glow powders.  Ive made a lot of glow crappie baits this year.... Ive almost gone through a pound of glow this year.  White definitely glows the brightest.  I mix glow  with flourescent colors to get a more subtle glow of whatever color is used.  My opinion is that a subtle glow works better than a super bright glow, but that might just be me....  Maybe it isnt as alarming???  I do some just glow tail and some full glow.  Heres only pic i could find.

[ctom]

Does color affect the glow?

Do you like to do entire bait or just the tail?

Noticed adding a lot of glitter kind of breaks up the glow.

Glow pigments work best in clear plastic, period. Any coloring agents added to the plastic will filter the light that charges the glow pigments and can greatly hinder that process or eliminate it entirely rendering the glow useless.

Glow pigments in plastic is a complicated thing. Some pigments glow way more than others. Some colors of glow pigments are way more visible to certain fish. Crappies are thought to have eyes that are very sensitive to the color blue, however blue glow does little to attract winter crappies while red glow is an absolute murder weapon. Walleyes are notorious for being attracted to reds and oranges, while blue glow can be a deadly color. My feeling is that non-glow colors reflect specific lights or colors at different depths throughout the water column that fish respond to while glow coating literally glow in specific colors regardless of depth or water color/clarity. Because the pigment glows it will also cast an aura around whatever it is in or on and thataura can change the percieved size of the object. In essence, a 1" twister tail made of white plastic will look or be seen as one size while if the same tail is made of clear with ultra green glow pigment in it it can literally appear to a crappie to be as large as a 3" tail.

I make a lot of an ice plastic that is a mere 1"in length and glow colors are a popular market. I make it in the ultra green glow, blue glow,  purple glow and red glow. The ultra green and red are by far and away the most popular selling colors while I personally find that the purple glow does better on the over-all than those two combined. The purple is more difficult to get charged but the color itself is way more calm and far less pointed than the other two. I find that using the ultra or red in ways where the colors are limited to specks or dots does more to catch fish than having a whole bait in the single glow color and I believe it is that aura that makes fish wary of such a large chunk of glowing plastic.

Instead of trying to work glow pigment into a colored plastic, try making a small batch of clear using lots of stabilizer to help offset the heat that thre glow pigment will generate during the cooking process, or add the pigment after cooking the clear, then use a stick to place drops of the glow plastic to different areas of you mold cavities, then shoot the color in. The glow plastic will be on the outside of the plastic where it can get the best light and glow the best in return.

I do a ton of glow jigs in the winter on a custom basis for ice anglers. My most popular pattern is to paint the top 1/2 of a gold plated jighead in transparent purple lacquer, then add a "headlight" ...just a single small dot....of ultraglow to the very front of the jighead first dipping a pinhead in a puddle of super glue, then dipping that dot of glue into a small pile of the raw pigment. When dry, a touch of head cement seals the headlight. These jigs get used from October thru April. It just shows how a small spot of glow can do a whole lot of attracting. Getting the attention of the fish is what you want to achieve, not blind them. Water has a whole world of critters in the bio-luminescent realm but its a world of minute quantities of critters that glow. Think about that before you start gassing up plastics with a bunch of glow.

Glow pigments make plastic look really nnice. Keep in mind who's doing the viewing. Human perception is far different than that of an animal that views things in a liquid environment. Paint or plastic, solid color, transparent, fluorescent or basic colors all change color as they descend in water. Glow pigments do not change color but they can appear larger and larger as they go deeper because they carry and generate their own light into areas where darkening is the norm.

On the glitter and glow. The glitter and glow are both solids and suspend in the plastic to some degree. Glow pigments suspended behind flacks of glitter will be robbed of the light they need to charge and then again a charged particle of pigment cannot shoot light thru a flake of glitter. Glow pigment in front of glitter will hinder the reflection of light off the glitter.  Glitter and glow might not be the best mix.

I suggest using small batches of glow and if you are going to make whole baits in glow they should be small baits and the ratio of glow to plastic volumn should be kept fairly thin.

Try www.glowinc.com for high performance pigments. An ounce of purple should go quite a ways unless you are shooting worms or frogs/creatures. Glow is a lot of fun once you get accustomed to some of the glitches it has related to it. Its super heavy and likes to sink in plastic, thsu the suggestion of working in smaller amounts. Also keep the plastic stirred a lot to keep the pigment in the plastic not on the bottom of the cup.

[mrex]

Thank You CTOM I spent the afternoon trying to put glow dots on some baits.
Need to practice because it is harder than it sounds 

Have one more mold I want to purchase the wuz-it after that may go ahead and order the purple glow got to thinking about it the 2oz of reg glow has lasted me quite awhile.

[ctom]

You know what they say about practice....try just heating up some junk plastic and practice using it. I make dipping sticks, some are just bamboo skewers in a couple different diameters and other sticks are 1/4" dowel stock cut 6" long that have been run thru a common pencil sharpener to get different diameter flats on the ends.

That purple glow in the late fall and early winter is one intriguing color. Early morning, late afternoon or mid-day with heavy cloud cover....vertical submerged wood, dock pilings in deeper water, bridge pilings: now you're talkin.

As will happen quite often when the fish are hitting glow baits,  a quick switch in glow color can make a huge difference. The regular old glow is a good starting color. If the fish are fussy about it, try the glow red. If you are having fair luck with the red and the bite starts to head south, move to that glow purple and hang on.

Glow pigments target specific areas of the white-light spectrum and leave little room for washed colors or gray areas. When certain glows work, they tend to work great. When the glows are not producing you may as well put the glow box away.