Ultra Violet Light and lures

[Micanopy]

So I have been reading about Ultra Violet light. It is a series of colors that are of a wave length that is said to be invisible to us. However, animals and fish ( crappie are fish ) can in fact see this spectrum of colors. We see visible blue but not UV blue, they see UV blue and maybe not our visible blue. The first I learned about all of this was decades ago reading about washing camo clothing. Tide detergent adds UV brighteners to make clothes appear cleaner than they actually are. Your white shirt is actually dingy white, but with the enhancement the shirt looks really white. Adding Tide detergent to the machine when washing camo adds these brighteners to the camo, rendering it quite visible to deer and birds and fish of course. The deer cannot see blue but the hunter wearing a Tide washed camo jacket will glow like a light bulb.

One of our wedding gifts was a collection of uranium plates and glasses. They belonged to her great grandmother and they are green, but when a UV light source hits them they glow like, well like they are radioactive green. We don’t eat off them, they are just for looking through. Anyways I am shining this light around the house and start seeing other things that glow. All manner of things have these UV brighteners added. They get added to make the things catch our eye so we will buy them.

Anyways, I was practicing jig tying and was using plain unpainted jigs no collar and powder painting them with a bright orange that contains UV brighteners. The idea is that visible light sources, such as the Sun can only penetrate water so far. Murky water limits that depth even further. UV light penetrates much deeper. So in theory, something coated with UV enhancements could still be visible to fish even when it is deeper than the visible light can reach.

I was wondering what you guys know about crappie and UV enhancements. They seem to shun the light of day. Small creatures emit UV coloration which can be seen using a UV light source. Tomato caterpillars ( horn worms - the larva of Hawk moths ) glow as do scorpions. I am thinking crappie might be tuned in to this UV spectrum, and that is why they move away from visible light. Remaining in sunlight might reduce their UV advantage, if they have one. Plankton and such emit UV colors as well.

I bought some things to test UV out. A UV oil from ProCure. I selected one that contains no scents so I could mix it with my Slab Sauce. I have this mixture in a tightly sealed jar that I can dip jigs down into. They claim it works by making the lure more easily seen by the fish. Some swear by it, but I am not so sure.[ I tried the squirt bottle but missed and made a mess.]

After I tied up a jig I hit it with the UV light to see how well the powder paint glowed. Well I was surprised to see this.




The powder paint glowed, but look at the chenile. It really glowed.



This is chenile ( balled up in package) next to some yarn that I bought at Walmart instead of buying chenile, which is kind of pricy. Big spool for a few bucks and all sorts of neon colors and they glow. The yarn glows even brighter and I have enough to last forever.

So all of this made me curious and I just had to ask you guys about all of this UV light stuff. Does it make a difference or is it much to do about nothing much ?