In general, I agree with you - we often overthink what we need to catch fish - I still carry a good selection of colors - here's why.
My wife and I fish ALOT of grubs - its our 'go to' bait - for along time, we kept losing 'tails' - we'd get the nibble, react, and pull back a tail-less grub.
We blamed it on 'little monsters' every time - you know - tail biters, smaller fish - gills and the like.
One day - we switched colors - blue -> brown, etc - we started catching decent fish - same area, same everything else - just a color change.
Lesson learned -
If you're getting bites, but not hooking up - the fish like everything about what you are doing EXCEPT the color - and a relatively minor change can help the fish commit.
Similarly - I've had days where "smoke purple" would not produce - but "smoke purple red" would - again - everything else being equal.
Thats interesting Sim. I always enjoy hearing about others experiences. I personally have had the opposite results. I can usually switch colors of flake or various shades of smoke, green, or brown and really don't see a difference in catch ratio. However, the chartreuse marker accent gets me considerably more action. Funny though, a chartreuse poured tail doesn't work as well as the marker. I wonder if the tail pour is too gawdy and the marker just gives it a hint of glow in the water.
Drew, that is an amazing bait. If I'm throwing a crank or jerkbait it would have that color pattern with the chartreuse and a olive colored or black back. I have never seen that particular back color before...interesting...
