here are some colours i have been thinking of here lately. I posted these on the Sportsfish site in Aussie, but I'll pop them up here as well ...

and...

but my faves are...

These are just some skirts i scored tossed onto some seconds grade heads Ipinched off a lure maker in Aussie recently.

I shall not mention any names for fear of being called a spammer! :-)

I will still be using my Lumos, purple blacks and so on, and have also got myself a very sexy looking black/red that I may scan to show yez all.

cheers for now, Stu.

Colours! hah! As long as they catch an angler, they'll catch a fish!

Well, sorta.

Me, I always have a lumo somewhere in my pattern, that is a must have. Also i like Blue/whites/reds, Purple Blacks,Grenn/yellow/orange or red.

A ghost(squid browny type) is great in the white water.

A selection of those colours here and there is usually enough to fil a spread for me!

i wish icould post pics here, I'd show you a coupla lurs skirt selections that have greatly taken me recently... maybe i'll send them to Kerren, and he can post them up for me?

Cheers,

Stu.

Talking of cheap lures and patterns and our first Stripie, out of Raglan. We'd spent some time on The 21 catching rat kingies on jigs. We then set off to The 23, 1 hour trolling. Our plan was to catch some albies, so out went 4 lures, 2 of them being small Zuker zuchinnis. We caught numerous albies and the area was alive with birds and we could see some YFT coming to the surface nearby. While we were netting an albie, there was a huge splash on the other side of our 5 metre tinnie, we looked around but just saw the waves. Off we went again and as we had one marlin lure and an old Okuma lever drag with 24kg we decided to put out the lure. This was a Boone angle-faced lure given free with a subscription from NZ Fisherman. 10 minutes lates, just as we arrived at The 23, a 120 kg stripie was dancing off the back of the boat. Colour of the lure - yellow/green, looked awfully like a rat kingie.

That's when I started my lure collecting career. Never used that cheap lure again, why should I, as I've got much better, dearer lures to try out.

Besides Purple and Black one colour combo I really have a lot of faith in whenever there are lots of S.J.T is Metallic Blue Vinyl with Pink inner skirts or Dark Blue and Silver over Pink or Pink and White (Bart - Arctic Bonito or Pakula - Blue Hawaii) especially when combined with a pearl shell lurehead, this is the closest thing to the colours of a fresh skippy I can think of, dark blue back and silver belly and sides with pearlescent pinkish sheen. 

One thing to note before going on that B.T.S skirt orgy is the differences in texture and fit between skirts due to differing skirt thickness, neck size, length and so on .... certain brands of skirt are noticeably thicker/heavier and sometimes longer than others that are supposedly the same size and the neck size can differ too making Brand X skirt the perfect fit for Lure Head Y, but possibly not so good for Lure Head Z...if you've got lots of lure heads like I do it's not a bad idea to take notes which skirt combos perform best on individual lure heads,

Grant brings up the thought provoking question, which factor in a lure is most important in getting the bite, the smart-aleck answer would probably be they all function as a unit, but my feeling is the main trigger is probably lure action, my feeling is that the fish are normally attracted to a zone behind the boat first (that zone depending on hull shape engine noise etcetcetc), and some (maybe many) are hungry or aggressive enough to attack anything in that zone which explains the fish hooked on hotdogs, bananas, towed rags etc but others that won't, will eat a carefully tuned (speed-placement-leader-skirting-rigging) lure in other words the lure action gets a reaction that the hotdog doesn't, not surprising since the lure's designed to catch fish and the hotdog isn't but as for the differences between lures the fish are the best judge of what they want on a given day and some days they just will favour something that surprises you, whether its a Kmart special or a williamson daisy chain or even a good old 9" metal jet, (well I'm not surprised when a billfish eats a 9" metal jet anymore, anyway...) 

  but the more bait there's present the more impt. it is for the lure or at least some lures in the pattern to be similar to the bait in size and colour because the fish are going to be increasingly locked on to the bait the more bait there is in which case lure colour may even supersede action in getting the bite, lure smoke probably helps fish home in onto the lure from medium distance but when a fish is close to the lure I doubt the smoke in itself is a factor in the bite. 

Roddy Hays (Plankton) has made the point that with tuna you're more trying to simulate whatever they are feeding on whereas marlin seem to react to lures out of aggression or instinct as well, with marlin I feel the aggression alone can often be enough which is why it's quite possible to get a bite on a small lumo green lure when circling around a school of ten pound skipjack tuna (for instance), wrong size wrong colour but the action was enough to entice the bite

that's my thoughts, for what they're worth...

cheers dustin

ps. which Sea Tal headshape is doing the damage, from recollection they have a load of different lure patterns

Lots of good info coming out on this thread and looks like some questions raised could start a whole new thread with I’m sure will get plenty of answers in their own rights.

I’ll stick to the colour theme here, although for perhaps another topic I would like to see what importance anglers rate each of the following lure features. Say out of 100%.

• Colour
• Action/vibration/harmonics
• Size
• Bubbles

Apart from running mostly Pakula’s our colours pretty much are same as you have listed. This is the mainstay of our explorer pattern.

Other colour options we have had success with lately are SR Green/Yellow…our best performer marlin wise last year (could be deemed to be a small YFT, and probably why the stripes thought Yumm.Yumm and climbed all over it).

Mostly the shottie position we experiment with, anything from Blue/Silver to say Black/Amber (Frightened squid – popular on the West Coast?).Brown Pink etc…some representing squid colours.

Also read a recent thread on another board (SCMO) re shottie lures/colours for blues and one lure often mentioned and seemed to be receiving lots of hits o’seas was a Black/Pink (Bart Super pro Jet).

Re: the other posts the fruit salad is favoured by plenty of anglers and some swear by the Sea Tal in Blue/Silver and Black/silver for the blues.

Cheers

hi kerren.

it wasnt actually me that got the marlin (wish it was though) but yes there was a bit extra spent on the terminal tackle but it's amazing that some of the cheapies work. i still really beleive that you usually get what you pay for when it comes to quiality which is probably why we chaned the rigging on it.

b.m