Xanadu

I'm going to try to give a short answer to a very complex question.



First, Tred Barta is an idiot and a psycho crazy jackass.



Now that we've gotten that out of the way, Woody's right that the chewed Bonita works better than a new one for wahoo. I don't know why, but it does.



As for color, I'm assuming you're talking about billfish and their eyes are different than ours. The color you see is not what they see and they see things in lures that we cannot. Black Bart, Peter Pakula, Erik Rusnak and probably others are mixing "secret" ingredients into skirts and heads that supposedly appeal to billfish eyes. They've described it as similar to how humans see neon, but who really knows. There are many theories of color and they're probably all right to some degree. Dark lures on bright days provide a better silhouette, but from underneath looking up into the sun, all you can see is black so who cares what color? On dark days, bright lures might be a good idea or it could just be that if you drag a lure in front of a hungry or pissed off fish, it will eat it.



Personally, I think its more action and presentation than color. That said, you always want to match the colors to the prevailing bait in the area. Around here, we have lots of flyers, so blue and white are good. Pink works great and can look like squid, bonita or flyers.



One more thing in response to some saying that each boat has a soft spot that gets hit more. I disagree. Yes, all boats have different wakes, but you should get equal hits in each spot. If you're not, you need to change out the loser baits for better ones so they get hit more. If not, then why not just drag the one that's getting all the bites?