Green FishLights, Blue FishLights, Red FishLights…and More!
We’ve seen them all, from mounted mercury vapor lights and bug-sluggers to underwater styles involving green bulbs. We have purchased and tested many of these solutions, and we have drawn some conclusions.
First and foremost, the Bo-Jo light’s primary goal is to attract bugs, which in turn draws fish! The fish arrive due to both the light source and the half-stunned, floundering population of bugs being knocked into the water every evening.
Another consideration is light intensity. You’ll absolutely find that higher wattage bulbs produce correspondingly higher wattage bug and fish attracting power. That is indisputable.
White Fluorescent Bulbs
Overall, this is still what we mostly use in our own lights when we’re not testing other bulbs. White fluorescent bulbs are cheap, easy to find and replace, provide great illumination for dockside activities, attract volumes of bugs and attract fish with no doubt.
Green Fluorescent Bulbs
OK, here’s one you’ve heard a lot about… green light for fishing. We’ve tested them in Bo-Jo Fishlights, and they perform pretty well. Green light still attracts a sizable number of bugs. Visually, the light color is that sort of iridescent green you’ve seen before. As for drawing fish to the light beam, they seem unaffected by the green versus white light bulbs.
Red Fluorescent Bulbs
Red bulbs don’t draw bugs to speak of at all. The advantage of red bulbs is that you aren’t “night-blind” as you pursue your nighttime fishing, as you are with white light or green light. Some more shy fish (like catfish) are much more likely to be around with red (or blacklight) bulbs over the water. Hunters have used red headlamps for years to combine good human visual sight without disturbing game in their surrounding area.
Blue Fluorescent Bulbs
In testing blue bulbs, we got decent performance. Some people say that blue bulbs perform better in murky water, but we don’t have enough evidence at hand to suggest this ourselves.
White LED Bulbs
These bulbs are more expensive, but seem to last forever. The light color from them is a bit bluer in nature, but they still attract bugs very well. Additionally, light from these bulbs seems a bit “softer” in terms of dock illumination. We are starting to experiment with colored LED bulbs lately.
Blacklight Bulbs
Black light attracts a lot less bugs, but still provides pretty good night visibility. As for drawing fish, it seems that they still stay in the area, since they still look up to see the light source. Blacklight bulbs are another relatively expensive option, but they do provide interesting attributes for humans. Anything in the blacklight’s direct beam range or light spill area will glow, from fishing rods to fishing line to fish themselves.
Lastly… Underwater Lights Versus Surface Lights
Philisophically, we like all the advantages of our lights. They are cheap to operate, attract bugs, provide illumination for humans, are easy to accessorize with different styles and colors of bulbs, are more economical to purchase, AND you don’t have to worry about fish tangling your line up on them when you’re fishing!
