Article by Dale Timmons
It’s one of those time honored discussions that fishermen often have but never resolve—do you use white or black lures when you fish at night? Some anglers use only white, say a white bucktail with a white twister, and they catch fish, while others opt for black and say they do equally well. Using a black lure at night sounds counterproductive, but the theory is that a dark lure actually provides a better silhouette at night, especially when viewed from below by a fish looking for bait on the surface. This is especially true at a location such as the Rt. 50 bridge, where there are lights above the surface. Black bucktail jigs with both a black head and black hair have long been a favorite with some bridge and inlet jetty anglers. Mirr-O-Lure makes an all-black version of its 52M and 72M models that is called the “Night Stalker”. They were popular many years ago when we had a lot of gray trout (weakfish) around the Rt. 50 bridge at night. I even saw quite a few big flounder caught on black Mirr-O-Lures fished from the bridge, though to be fair I probably saw just as many caught on a red head with white body model, the number 11 color. The Night Stalker color also works well in the surf at night for stripers or speckled trout, along with another dark color, the “Purple Demon”, which, as the name suggests, is a dark purple color. Other lure manufacturers such as Yo-Zuri and Rapala often keep black in their color lineup, especially for surface plugs. Black or another dark color is not only effective at night, however. One of my favorite Mirr-O-lures for speckled trout, thanks to Sue Foster, who had an old one lying around her store for a long time and decided to try it, is the TT54, which is black on both the bottom and top with silver sides and black spots. The TT(Tiny Trout) model of this color has been discontinued, but the company still makes the 52M 54, which is the same model without the spots. It works especially well when the water is a little dirty or early in the morning or late in the evening. Some anglers, especially those who fish Indian River, also favor black for flounder. They use either black bucktail jigs or black plastic twisters on their regular hooks, along with a bait such as a live minnow or frozen shiner. I make versions of my Delmarva Double flounder rigs with both black and dark purple twisters, and some days they work very well. Last winter there was an excellent late run of puppy drum in the surf on the Outer Banks. Most anglers were using either a gold Hopkins lure or a jig head and twister to catch these fish, but a friend of mine who was there told me one angler he got to know had taken Hopkins lures and epoxied them with a dark purplish black color, and he was catching more than his share, sometimes when the lighter colors weren’t working especially well. Anglers from Buxton to Ocracoke, NC often use straight running lead lures similar to the Sting Silver in a variety of colors to cast to bluefish or Spanish mackerel. On my last trip down that way I noticed that a lot of these lures were now being offered in black or dark purple, usually with a strip of reflective tape down the sides to make them look like a strange colored silverside. Like I said at the beginning, black or white is one of those fishing discussions that will never be resolved, but if you are one of those “I use any color as long as it’s white” fishermen, there are times when you definitely may be missing the bite…
An article in the May 19 issue of the Virginian-Pilot says a development in Corolla, NC on the Outer Banks has just been approved. It includes a 100-room hotel, 32 condominiums and 22,000 square feet of retail space. Ironically, the article stated, “Currently owned by the Audubon Society, the property was part of a Natural Heritage Area that includes 2,600 acres of undeveloped land on the Currituck Sound.” The Audubon folks agreed to sell 13 acres of oceanfront, “saying it has limited conservation value.” Probably has quite a bit of value to the birds and animals living there. I understand the property was originally part of a large hunting club. It was probably given or sold to the Audubon Society with the idea that it would never be developed, but like I have said before, with most of these big “conservation” organizations, it’s all about money. Old folks leave a piece of land to the Audubon Society or the Nature Conservancy thinking that it will be preserved, and the next thing you know they sell or swap it, and it suddenly becomes a gas station or housing development. All this while they are instrumental in closing a place such as Cape Point, arguably the most famous surf fishing location in the world, because a pair of oyster catchers are nesting less than a thousand feet away…is it just me, or is something wrong with this picture…?
Folks keep asking me if the oil from the Gulf of Mexico will end up on our Delmarva beaches, as if I had some direct line to whomever is in charge…the only answer I can give is that the Gulf Stream generally makes a hard right turn down off the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, so I think it is unlikely…course I’ve been wrong a time or two. The “tar balls” on the news stories from the Gulf, however, kind of remind me of when I was a kid. Ships offshore used to pump their bilges in those days, and it wasn’t unusual, especially if we had an onshore wind, for tar balls (which were actually oil) to wash up on Ocean City beaches. My mother kept a gallon jug of turpentine next to the back door, with strict instructions for us to clean the tar off our feet when we came back from the beach. She complained that the customers in the Tarry-A-While guest house where I grew up would get it all over the sheets, effectively ruining them…this situation in the Gulf, however, is much more than a few tar balls—it is nothing short of a catastrophe. I spent most of a week fishing out of Venice, LA a few years ago, and the area is mostly miles and miles of marshes and waterways, full of shrimp, oysters and fish, in addition to the birds and fur bearing mammals. This fragile ecosystem could be irrevocably damaged if much of that oil comes ashore, not to mention what the effects might be on the deeper waters of the Gulf and the nearby coast of Florida, including the Keys…
Contact Dale Timmons at [email protected] or call 410-629-1191.
