Clear baits

[ctom]

All right, who here likes very clear plastic baits? Baits without any colorant or pearl or hi lite, but maybe some glitter. One of the primary forces behind my wanting to make my own baits has always been the lack of truly clear baits and at times they are by far superior to any other bait color. For years I have migrated toward any bait that was very transparent. Color didn't matter as long as it was transparent but there were times when a very clear plastic lit the fish like nothing else. Back then the only clear baits were the Bass Pro Shops crappie tubes or Southern Pro's limited assortment of clear tubes. Yes they were clear but I hated tubes.

Since starting with this crazy hobby I have finally put together a couple of clear colors, one being the bluegill you here me harp about, that have quite simply smoked a lot of fish. Then the uv craze hit and things went in another direction with the clear and quite honestly I am having a ball with it while the fish have been less appreciative of it. In the clear colors the uv added even in tiny amounts gives the clear a unique, if not eerie, bluish-purplish cast to the bait and as to whether it works the fish have more than qualified it for me. I add the uv to every color I make, even black, and the fish have shown more interest in the baits when compared to baits without the enhancement, but it is as clear as gin that the clear baits in the last season got more fish on an everyday basis.

So back to the question: Who likes very clear baits? Why? Do you find times when they produce better or not near as well? How about the sky conditions? Do you see the clear baits being more productive in the sun or when the clouds are about?

I journal my fishing and have found some things that I'd like to compare to some input from you guys. 

[siscojj]

Ctom I'd love to see some of your clear baits, would it be possible for you to post some and of your top producers. Jay

[Botanophilia]

I've started making a clear with just a touch of bronze hilite and a small amount of .15 and .04 black glitter.  Group b bait swap guys got some crappie carrots in this color recently.  I didn't get to do enough fishing last year, but it became my go to color (usually with jigheads in your purple blue glitter color Tom, I forget what you call the color) and produced well in pretty much all situations using it for carrots and 1.75" grubs, with or without uv in the baits.  Mostly sunny days this year, but a couple cloudy days and some evening low light situations, uv seemed to help on overcast days.  Clear water, stained water, murky, green algae colored water.  You name it I caught panfish in it.  Bluegills especially seemed more eager to hit this color than others and most of my big crappie came on it.

[andrewlamberson]

Clear ice fishing baits are all the rage here in the tropics of Minnesota. I make them with a tiny bit of rainbow glitter.

Last year you could see huge clouds of Water Daphnia (water fleas) on the ice fishing camera and the fish were really on the feed!

Check out the pictures at the link below...and I think that explains why the clear baits are so deadly. The nano in clear with a tiny bit of glitter was my #1 ice fishing bait last year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphnia

Andy

[Muskygary]

I also like clear baits. I think they blend in to the bottom lake color better, very important on clear water lakes. One thing I'm experimenting with is clear swimbaits that I paint. Mainly just the back or just the belly or a chartruse stripe down the side. Gives just a flash of color, but the outline of the bait isn't pronounced.

[ctom]

Sisco....

Here are a couple of the clears I do. The top few have a rainbow micro glitter similar to what Andrew mentions. I think he's using a .015 glitter whereas this bait's glitter is small, small. The rainbow mix stands out real well on a bright day but here in snowland we have clouds but you can still make out some of the color in there. The rainbow mix consists of gold, silver, blue, red, green, and fire opal equal parts of each.

The lower baits are the bluegill. This batch of bluegill has been re-melted or re-heated upwards of thirty times using the Essential plastic. You can see some of the glitter color leaching into the plastic. This hasn't mattered one iota to the fish. Had I mixed the bluegill just for this shot it would be as clear as the clear/rainbow is. Re-heating results in the blue and green glitter sloughing some stain in the plastic but as mentioned it has not hurt the bite one iota. 

Both plastic batches have uv enhancement and it can be seen doing it work in the tails fairly easy.



This bluegill is by far my pet clear color and I fish it both stand alone and with a chartreuse tail. Both ways produce.

[siscojj]

Thanks ctom those look pretty good

[efishnc]

All my clear baits have glitter, the most common of these baits are the wutz-it and smoking shad, usually with light belly (gold or silver) with a darker back (purple, blue, or green) for both bass and musky.  The next in my clear lineup is silver flake and UV for various walleye baits including the 6.5 RRT, the 4.75 smoking shad, the flipn zip, the 3.5 chub grub and the thump grub... after dark, UV=fish.  I also have made clear finesse worms (drop-shotting) and clear bass clubs (wacky worming).  Basically the clear comes out when the bite is tough or the water is extremely clear. 
(As a side note, extremely clear water is also the time when I typically favor baits with eyes.)

[2XL]

Andy,   There's a gin clear lake near here that is just rammed full of those little beasts. We have always called them Sea Monkeys. Not exactly the scientific name but I'm not that smart so it works for me. LOL  Anyway, One day I couldn't buy a bite in spite of a lot of fish around so I dropped my camera down the hole more or less out of boredom. The closer I got it to the bottom the cloudier the picture got. It looked like a blizzard and I didn't know what it was at first until I saw these white specks swimming around. There had to be millions of them just in the small area I looked. I tried smaller stuff down to a size 22 nymph on 1 pound test to no avail. It never occurred to me to try a small clear soft plastic bait. What size glitter are you using in those Nanos?

efish,  Thanks for the inspiration. Late in the season here as the temps drop the river clears up (I'm sure the Miss does too to some extent). As a result, the regular tactics/colors don't work near as well as when the water is dirtier. Dead sticking works OK some days but for the most part it's lockjaw city. I am definitely going to try some clear baits down the road once the river opens up again. 

[ctom]

Ma, her sister and husband and I took a road trip to Wisconsin last fall to a cousin's home on a lake. The word on the crappie bite when we got there was that the crappies were not cooperating at all.

The day before we were to come back home we all took a pontoon ride thru the entire chain of the lakes there and came upon a circus of boats on the last lake trolling minnows. "looking for crappies" they said. We had a light wind so we shut down the outboard and hooked up some jigs using a stinger bait, many of which I had done in a handful clear colors as well as my old faithful colors. Right off we started catching crappies on purple/chartreuse and after a while I decided to switch colors for a bit and put on a bait that was almost invisible save for the uv in it. Plain lead head.  Hold on people! The size of the fish I got took a quantum leap. A couple of the other changed up to the clear and they too were, as Jim Carey would say, "smoking". I think in the hour and a half we fished we saw three of the other boats put fish in baskets. Singular fish, that is. Some of those other boats were pissed with us.

That lake had about 6 feet of water clarity and we were drifting the jigs over weeds that topped out at around four feet in 12 to 14 feet of water. The crappies were right atop the weeds tops. We kept enough for a fry and released maybe fifty fish in the time we hung around. While cleaning the fish I took time to see what they had been chewing on and every fish I check had piles of small, almost transparent minnows.

During the late fall bite I got tied up in last fall I caught several walleyes [17" to 21"] in with the crappies and the best bait color was my bluegill/chartreuse tail. We were shore fishing and we had a total of seven northern hit the jigs too. Every time it was a small jig and a bait in the 1 1/2"  range. The plain firecracker held its own too.

I've done well on clear baits for years but was always stuck with a tube if I wanted clear. Of course that is changing now. Has been and will continue to.

[mike27]

what do you think  about clear stick baits for bass

[ctom]

Can't speak on behalf of the bass fishing. I do know that open-water walleyes during the winter like clear or near-clear baits.

[andrewlamberson]

I pour the Freedom Fry in clear with rainbow glitter and it does well...especially if the bass are chasing Emerald Shiners.

[mike27]

I shoot some blue gill pattern I saw here but it was late in the season so never really got work them out hope spring come early in ] ]

[mike27]

still tryin fig out pic thing I think I'm getting close  can I blame it on the  .lawyer  he seems the one everyone here blames