Cajun Red Line vs. Bleeding Bait Hooks

1) I believe the answer is that Cajun Red Line does disappear in the water and that Bleeding Bait hooks do stimulate strikes, mostly from fisherman! I've never noticed one bit of difference between bleeding hooks and traditional ones. It's just a marketing ploy to hook us all, and as fisherman, we willingly fall for it, as always. The manufacturers know, that as a group, we fisherman are gullible in addition to being chronic and habitual liars, and that we'll believe almost anything. I include myself. I have a bunch of red hooks and a proclivity for fabrication where fishing is concerned to prove it. The manufacturers just forgot to get together on this one before releasing their products.

2) First of all there are only three primary colors of light being red, blue and yellow. All colors are a combination of the three. Pigments appear to be a certain color because the color we see is the color of the light that is reflected. We do not see the colors a pigment absorbs.

Cajun Red is translucent. Light passes through it and light moves mostly in a straight line. Diffraction is when light passed through a clear or translucent material of different density and changes the direction of the light. This can be measured and the variation from material to material is called the Refraction Index.

Line reflects and refracts in air much more than it does in water. Mono diffracts light differently in water because the refraction index more closely matches water than air. By the way, fluorocarbon is nearly invisible in water because the refraction index closely matches the index for water so the light passes through it without refracting. This makes it more difficult to see in water.

Our eyes see red light when we view Cajun Red because the other colors are absorbed by the line and the red is what's left for us to sense. Water absorbs red light. When we look at deep water we see blue reflected. Since Cajun Red has already absorbed the blue and yellow light, when the water absorbs the red it makes the line invisible. Since light passes through it we only see the diffracted and reflected light. Less light is refracted and reflected in water because if the refraction index.

The bleeding bait hooks are opaque. They reflect and do not diffract red light meaning they change the direction of light entirely. The pigment on the hooks absorbs all the blue and yellow light as well. In very shallow water the red is reflected, unlike the line where the light passes through the material, so in shallow water fish see a pronounced red. But the real reason bleeding bait hooks work is the same reason the line works. The fish cannot see the hook!

My answer is based on the physics of light I learned in Grammar School in Dunoon, Scotland at the age of 12. Sometimes the mind is like a steel trap.

3) red doesn't "disappear" until several feet in depth.. as long as your bait with the bleeding hooks isn't so deep that the red "disappears", that color on a bait would seem if the bait is bleeding

4) the red line is for deeper water when the red colors fade away

5) There is a lot of talk about red hooks enticing strikes. The red Cajun line will disappear in deeper water. The red hooks will be fished a little shallower where they will look like gills or bleeding / injured bait. The hooks are also shinier than the line which allows for better visibility. Another way to look at this is fisherman ALWAYS fish better with something that they have confidence with or believe in.

6) Actually, the answer is very simple and is in two parts. First of all, the line is red but translucent, allowing light to penetrate the line. This coupled with the color of the water helps make the line invisible. Second, the Bleeding Bait hooks are solid and reflect light with a red tone, stimulating an automatic response from fish.

7) First of all as a great lakes fisherman for years it's common knowledge that red baits are the first to loose the color and actually turn to black the deeper you set your downrigger. It's my opinion that red line, unless your fishing fairly deep will not disappear. The reason I say this is I have been over 30 miles out on lake Michigan fishing for steelhead on the surface. You keep running until you see fish swirl on the surface from being spooked, then you set your riggers very shallow( less than 20 ft.). Now red and orange are great colors for steelhead and that far out the water clarity is amazing and at 20 ft. you can see the red cannon ball and the red hot and tot on a 5-6 ft .lead and it is still red.

8) If one reads the packaging carefully the red fishing line indicates that the color red becomes "invisible" at certain depths. Here's an excerpt from the website of Cajun Line Company:

"Water filters out certain colors more quickly than others. The color red is the first color to be completely filtered. This means that once Cajun Red Line goes under water it starts to become "invisible" to fish in as little as three feet of water! All the fish see is the lure."

You can read this at http://www.cajunline.com/science.html

They also claim in the graphic that the red line visibility diminishes at only 12'.

However, here's a great article that explains that red does not become invisible but rather becomes black at deeper depths, and it also explains that the light filtration is subject to the dispersion of light as a result of suspended particles in the water:

http://www.theoutdoorlodge.com/features/articles/fishing/freshwater/freshwater38.html

Here's another article on colors and their degree of penetration in the water: http://www.deep-six.com/page77.htm

This article is great as well because it explains in mathematical terms the absorbtion of light as the sum of the factors that cause attenuation including the natural absorption of clear water, dissolved matter in the water, and particles in the water.

http://www.deepocean.net/deepocean/index.php?science07.php

In summary it seems that in water less than 10' then the red hooks would reflect red, but at depths in excess of 10 ' (depending on the clarity of the water) then the hooks would turn black or dark green/black. In addition, there is no information that supports the claim that the fishing line turns "invisible" at depths greater than 12', but instead it turns black.

---THE END---

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