How many of you....

[ctom]

....live near water where you can drop a new bait in and see how it looks wet?

I've  got a creek and a river within a couple hundered feet of my back yard. The two merge at that point with the creek running immediately behind me. Right now the two are running fairly clear but both have some this staining to them. I take a walk when I get a shot done that I like to see what the colors do in the water. Sometimes things look way different in the hand than they do in the drink. I have a jig, tied to a length of line, with the hook bend snipped off that I just slip the plastic on the straight shank behind the head. The line is tied to an old section of rod. This is my dipping apparatus.

I have come to like the transparent baits way more than opaque or transluscent ones because of the way light can go in and out of the plastic, much like light plays on minnow bodies and colors. The blues, greens, smokes and purples get a workout for back colors while clears, thin pearl white and white will be favored for belly colors. Silver hi lite has added a new dimension to body colors of late too. Glitters are almost optional in the belly for me, but as a rule the more transparent the belly color is the more likely there will be some, but not much, glitter. For quite a while I used mainly the basic colors to get the back colors made up but recently I picked up a couple of browns and greens...pumpkin brown and green and watermelon brown and green....to use as colors to tweak some that have become standard for me.

Its amazing how just a drop of one of these new colors in a 4 ounce batch of plastic can move the original color and when water checking the new colors I see things looking just flat out natural. Much of the time I look at these same baits in the house or step outside with them and think this is it, then in the water I am at the WOW stage.

One thing I have come to know is that water and air render entirely different color renditions of the same identical piece of plastic and sun or clouds add or distract from what you see in both venues. In some cases I have used what I saw in the water to adjust a color to look different in that element. In some cases I have eliminated a specific colorant and gone to a changable colorant to see what the outcome is.

I know I have an advantage having the water so close at hand, but I think its important to pay attention to the colors we use to see what they look like other than in the house or in the hand out in the driveway. Just something more to think about.

[Muskygary]

I also live on a lake and it does make a handy test tank. Up till last year most of my baits were opaque (mostly worms and craws for bass) Now with the transperant baits for crappies and the popularity of swimbaits for bass you got me to thinking. If minnow baits look more natural when they are transparent; what about worms? The standard colors being black, purple, watermelom, punpkin etc. Would we get better results if we poured these up in more transparent colors? I saw your crappie color you made from nightcrawler and it got me to thinking about how that color would work on four and six inch worms. In seven to ten inch worms; I don't think anything like that has been poured?

[susquehannasean]

I liveabout 8miles from the river.  I have sevral creeks closer but none close enough to walk out the door.  My parents hve a place that is less than a block from the bay in Wildwood NJ.  They are talking bout selling it andbuying a place along the Susky to be cloer to their grandkids.

[gstott]

There are a couple of small reservoirs about 5 minutes from my house in either direction.  One is much clearer than the other, but it's all capped up for another month or two.  Looks like it's the sink or bathtub for now.

[Lamar]

  I have a 8 foot by 8 foot fish pond just off my deck. It's four feet deep and has a three foot ledge around it. The gold fish would rather I not be using it as a test tank but all is well later when I feed them. I think it does help. But living in Ohio it's a five gallon bucket till it warms up a bit.

[ipt]

i have an indoor pool at work, i throw stuff in after hours

[RonDon]

The rivers and bayous where i live are very muddy.  Clear water here is about 4" of visibility.  Transparents are not the ticket for me.  I havent seen many transparent baitfish 'round here!

[basskat]

Have a cow pond in the pasture about 100 feet from my shop. It stays clear year round and serves as my test tank.

[WALLEYE WACKER]

I have a river 1/4 mile from my house and a lake 1/4 mile from work. A lot of time's I fish both in the same day. It's great that there are so many lakes and river's close too me . A friend of mine has a   floating section on the end of his pier that we use to test bait's on. I do prefer transparent 's also unless it's white or black I have the best luck with green char. with lime & copper flake. All the water is stained by me except in the fall it clear's up. Like most of you I know what kind of action just by the size tapper angle of the tail if it's a boot type tail  I like it 90* too the bait that gives you more side to side roll at slow speed the way the walleye's want it when the water get's cold. also if the thickness at the tail is right when you hold the head with you finger's and the tail pointing up it should fold over and touch the side of the bait at half way point of the bait. I also know that plastic additives will help but it's more about the distance from the widest part off the bait too the tail .The size of boot/tail  is also key. sorry I got off the subject . But we all have bags of baits that don't dew what we thought they would. Hope this help some of the people that are new too swim baits. mike

[BareKnuckleJigs]

Here in the Hills of Southwest Mississippi...where the land is a'plenty...fishing water is a pretty good drive from home.  I think this is the most dry place I've ever been to in the South...and I ended up living here (oh the torture!)!  Because of this Trajically Parched Landscape, I use one of our Rainwater Collection Troughs for Bait Testing.  The largest Trough is 8' long, 3' wide, 2' deep...300 gallons...and right outside my shop.  It serves it's Dual Purpose quite well, but twitching or swimming a bait in that small space isn't the same as having some room in fishable water.

[BigHawgBaits]

I have a irrigation canal behind the house in the spring to the fall. Other then that I have a 55 gallon aquarium heated outside works well when it's real cold I drop them in my wifes fish tank with the oscars in it if they react to it then I know