Lures that glow and reflect UV light

A lot of today’s fishing lures reflect UV light and glow under water. Take a look inside your tackle box, anything that is chartreuse or hot pink will glow under water. A lot of baitfish like shad, minnows, bluegills, and crayfish glow and reflect UV light, which makes it easier for bass or walleye to find them.

Take a look at some of our lures below.

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Above is a box of Strike King 10XD lures. Notice what happens when we flash a blacklight on them.

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We flashed the light on each side. Notice the chartreuse colored lures glow.

Same thing happened with our jig box.

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The chartreuse jigs glowed. Also glowing are the soft plastics with glitter in them. They seem to absorb and reflect UV light too. Even that hot pink Whopper Plopper lit up. We noticed that a lot of top water baits have an underside that is finished with reflective paint.

Next we tried our walleye river fishing jig box.

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Under the blacklight.
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No wonder walleye love hot pink and chartreuse. The very top picture is lure paint. Notice all the paint bottles glow.

The Rapala jerk baits are also glowing. Same with the Rapala X-Raps. Same with many of the Spro squarebill crankbaits. Same with the underside of the Spro frogs. We checked lipless crankbaits, almost every single one by every company lit up.

The colors that seem to have the most UV reflectiveness naturally (or infused into them) are chartreuse (the brightest), hot pink, hot orange, and green. It’s no wonder those colors catch the most fish. Firetiger anyone?

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One of our spoons was also finished with a UV reflective coating.

We discovered this by accident. We had been reading about UV lures and baits and how they catch more fish. We wanted to test out some of our lures. It’s almost Halloween, we had access to plenty of blacklights. We started testing everything in every bag. Almost every single bait lit up. It seems that manufacturers have caught on to this secret sauce and have started using it.

Almost all of the fishing paints are infused with UV reflective materials, or they just naturally reflect UV rays.

You can buy an almost clear UV reflective paint to paint your older lures with on Amazon. we have purchased some and are experimenting with it.

Even the fishing  garlic scented dye that you can use to dip the tails of your soft plastics in, it’s UV reflective too!

We have stumbled upon an entire new world of baits and lures that will work when its cloudy out, in murky water, or it’s getting dark out.

Of course, if the water is clear and it’s high noon, the baits take on their more natural colors and don’t reflect UV rays.

Research has indicated that natural sunlight can only penetrate about 5-8 feet of water. Whereas UV rays can penetrate up to 40 feet.

we have also discovered a company, Tightlines, that actually sells UV infused soft plastics. We have ordered a bunch of their lures and will be testing them out. But don’t worry, most of your hard baits are already finished with UV reflective coating.

Check back often to see how our field testing with UV reflective soft plastics works out.

 

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Editor in Chief

Over 40 years of fishing experience! Began as a young boy at age 10, and slowly grew deeper and deeper into this hobby! Have been a writer and technology reviewer since 1990.