Do marlin see color? At first blush, this issue appears to be something easily approached through scientific examination and then backed up by empirical evidence. You would simply ring up the biology department and request an answer, and that would put the issue to rest. Except that these are the same people who would have you believe that billfish behavior is not affected by moon phase and that a raccoon is smarter than my Labrador retriever. On the other side of the fence, you have some pool-hall biologists claiming that billfish not only see all colors, they actually prefer lures with doll-type eyes rather than the less expensive adhesive eye stickers. The main problem with these views is that while most of these people are smart, their grip on reality is tenuous at best.
Do billfish see different colors? The answer, according to scientists, is probably not, though they do see different shades. In any case, the main point really isn't what a billfish sees, but how it reacts to what you're dragging in front of its face. For a different view of this question, we'll give the guys in the field a shot.
Hatteras Hues
My experience with color when fishing in North Carolina has been much different than when fishing less pressured grounds like Bom Bom and Central America. In North Carolina, the lure of choice for blue marlin is a blue/white Ilander (known in the fishing world as the Hawaiian Eye) combined with a medium or large ballyhoo. Large baits like mackerel and squid are successful here, as are naked ballyhoo and Softheads, but nothing works with the same consistency as the blue/white Ilander. And this pattern has been established through years of hard fishing.
Jim McKeral, owner of Jacksonville, North Carolina's Carolina Lures and maker of high-quality skirted lures for natural baits, boils it all down: "We have two colors here in the Carolinas: blue/white and white/blue."
McKeral is only barely joking. No other color skirt/natural combo even approaches the success of blue/white. Why, I ask, if a blue marlin cannot differentiate between color?
Another important point to consider is the fact that under certain conditions, other colors are used with reasonable success. The pink-and-purple ballyhoo combination is at its best when there are squid present, and the yellow/chartreuse color is particularly effective when pulled over a small mackerel and used around school-sized dolphin. This tells me that marlin under heavy fishing pressure recognize what they're eating, and a smart angler imitates that as closely as possible in not only size and shape, but color as well. Under normal conditions in North Carolina, this means the high-contrast blue/white.
On the other side of the fence, and on the other side of the ocean as well, are the big blue marlin of Africa's Bom Bom Island. There is no proven color pattern at Bom Bom; we had success on just about every color of lure, with maybe just a tad more luck coming from pink/white. Common sense tells you that, whether these fish can visually recognize color or not, they are executing an aggressive response to the stimulus of a lure going by their nose. While it is doubtful that these fish will ever face the same fishing pressure that confronts their Western Atlantic cousins, it would be interesting to find if they eventually develop the same color preferences.
Kona Kolors
Since we're on the subject of lure colors, I guess it's smart to go right to the source of billfish lures, and that is the town of Kona, Hawaii. Kona is the land of high-dollar lures in display cases, removable and changeable skirts, and every shape of lure head known to man. So what do Kona's anglers say when you ask them about lure color?
"I think all of us would agree that if you pulled your jockey shorts, you would get a strike every now and then," says Hawaiian skipper Norm Isaacs. "But I am absolutely convinced that color makes a difference. What really convinces me that color matters is that we will go for a time catching fish on different style lures, but of all one color. Then that color will go ice cold and another color will work. I firmly believe they react to color as it relates to what they are feeding on at the time.
"You see a lot of blues, blacks and purples used in Hawaii," Isaacs continues. "We do not have the same success rate with the lighter, brighter shades that are typically used in Mexico. I will keep my eyes on what is going on in the water, and that plays a large role in what color we fish with. If I see a lot of the small squid in the area, I will select blue and purple lures, because that is what the squid look like when they are in the water. When the skipjack tuna are around, we have good success with a purple and silver combination. A skipjack is not a purple and silver fish, but if you look at them in the water, they look purple and silver."
When you live in Kona's tropical paradise and work its year-round fishery almost daily, you have the opportunity to test a lot of theories. Isaacs has found fault with the "dark day/dark lure" principle in the following manner. "When we have the infrequent dark, rainy day here - and I mean when there is actual precipitation coming down - we will pull bright pink," Isaacs says. "This has been a successful tactic for us over the years. It started when we took a $30,000 prize in a tournament with a 844-pound blue caught on a bright pink Softhead. It does not go along with the conventional dark day/dark lure wisdom, but it has produced for us."
Shades of the Caribbean
My good buddy and successful charter captain Juan Torruella of San Juan, Puerto Rico, is pretty typical, I think, of a great number of billfish anglers. While he says he is not sold on color being an important factor for blue marlin - "you can tell anyone that I think color is more for the fisherman than the fish," he says - he ironically offers some very definite opinions on the best colors given certain conditions.
"I've always been a sucker for purple-and-black and the Softhead Super Chugger with pink on the outside and blue on the inside," Torruella says. "That is a very successful lure for both San Juan and Mayaguez. On overcast days, I like yellow/green along with pink/blue, pink/white and green/ orange. On sunny days, I like to pull three black lures and one light lure. Black and anything, that's my sunny-day choice. The fish can distinctly see shades and whatever lure it sees best, that is what it will take."
