Glow pigments, and that's what you're buying at Do-It is refined pigment if you buy from the plastics portion of the store, all glow differently....at different rates or intensities. Shining any uv light on the plastics made with the pigments or the uv powder will show uniform glow because the bulb only delivers a uniform amount exposure.
The eerie green glows and white glow [the pigment, not "glow" put in or on white] are the easiest to charge and stay the longest. Blue is next. Then yellow, oranges, reds and finally purple. Purple almost always needs straight sunshine or prolonged shots with a camera flash, but it has a deep color that borders so close on the invisible uv light we cannot see that even fully charged it can be tough to see but it is there and is a truly deep water color of glow than can hold together for hours. Most people stop using glow purple because they cannot see active glow coming from the bait and assume it doesn't work. Wrongo!
Sunshine is the best of all chargers for glow pigments and will help one determine when a "right" amount of the pigment has been reached. The little "Taser" chargers are toys by comparison. A detachable camera flash is about as good as an artificial light source as you'll find. To a point, how much pigment one should is largely personal preference. A person can make baits glow like holiday lights but at some point the amount of pigment is going to breach the strength of the plastic and breaking or bite-offs will plaque the user. Too many people boost the amount of pigment thinking that those dinky tasers are going to light baits up like fireworks. Wrongo again, the pigments need some serious intense uv light and that comes from the sun and also can be found in camera flashes.
Most people use way more of the uv powder in plastic that what is needed. Done properly a plastic should NOT show any bluish or purplish "skinning" on the surface of the baits. If a person has batched the uv enhancer right this tinging will be seen ever so slightly when the baits are in shaded sunlight, as in inside the shade line in a garage with the door open on a sunny day ad even then the tinging will be very, very slight. While even in crystal clear water uv light from the sun has been registered at depths in excess of 900 feet so its safe to assume that any freshwater fishing being done with enhanced baits the baits can be seen even in dirty water. From personal fishing I have seen a definite up-tick in bait productivity when the uv blast is in every bait, every color I use. When I batch plastic, I pour the raw plastic in the cup then I add uv enhancer then color. That order. Religiously. I may be scraping the near bottom of the container now but I am still using the first jar of the powder I got....that's how seriously little is needed to be apparent to the fish. How much uv blast is in the plastic doesn't determine much as far as its visibility goes, its how much uv light from above is getting to where you bait is. And this point is where the separation between uv enhancer and glow comes in.
Available uv light works on the blast product, while charge affects glow products. The stronger the charge source, the stronger the glow. While uv light diminishes as it goes deeper, those charged plastics and jigs get seemingly brighter as the water carries less and less light with depth. And while water and the particulate matter found in it tend to filter any light as depth increases the glow products carry light, without being filtered down, to depths not normal for fish to see the light, colored or otherwise. Reds and oranges are so productive among panfish, crappie and walleye anglers in the winter because those colors are perhaps being seen for the first time ever by the fish. In open water, clear open water even, a frog with an orange belly will see the orange go to brown by 8 feet. Orange glow at 40 feet is still orange. It will take that 8 feet of distance AWAY from the glow jig to brown it out but fish under the ice are focused well inside of a smaller target zone and are still seeing orange. Now all we need to prove is whether fish see in actual color or if they are seeing different intensities of light reflected off baits and lures.
A down side of glow baits/jigs is that water that's stained or carries a particulate load can cause whole glow baits to "aura" or glow past the bait itself as the glow light is reflected off the water. Often times this will give the bait a "perceived" appearance of being too large or larger than a fish wants to tackle. I make my Wax Wigglers in both sizes using glow tails, the rest of the bait being a clear sparkle color or a fluorescent, these get used while fishing docks early in the spring and again late fall. Like the uv blast, I feel that most people over-do glow in or on baits. I use straight glow pigment and super glue on the tip of a common pin to add a single dot of the powder to my 1/32 and 1/64 heads used on the docks. I puddle a bit of glue in a pop cap, dip the tip of the pin in it and put the speck of glue on the forward end of the head of the jig then I dip the glue into whatever color of pigment I am using. Hang the head for ten minutes and come back using the back, or top of the pin dipped in the glue and tap a spot over the hardened pigment and this is good to go. I'm really offering only tiny specks of color but without the specks or tiny, whispy tails I often am fishless until I switch things up. I doesn't take much and usually way less than eople think.
