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Colour Selection - The GrubZ Challenge

By Tomas McIntosh

When you first get into fishing with soft plastics, one of the biggest challenges you face is selecting the correct colour for your target species. Walking into a tackle store, you are met with walls full of weird and wonderful colours of soft plastics, from neon pinks to translucent colours with flecks of glitter. In this piece I am going to explain my process of selecting the correct colours, with the aim of helping you to catch more fish. Selecting the correct colour can change a slow day into a successful one very fast.

As a bream angler, the first lure that I am tying on for a session is the ZMan 2.5" GrubZ. This is a brilliant lure for beginners as the tail of the grub will swim temptingly through the water column before you even start the retrieve. This 10X Tough curl tail is also effective on a massive range of species, including flathead, bream, estuary perch, bass, trout, mullet, salmon, redfin perch and more.

In the ZMan 2.5" GrubZ range there is currently over a dozen colours and they all catch fish. As a tournament angler I love pushing my abilities and taking on a challenge. When a friend of mine said "I bet you can't catch a fish on every colour GrubZ", my eyes lit up and I was keen for a challenge. I purchased every colour GrubZ and went out for a session on a highly pressured Melbourne lake, to try my luck. Before starting, there were colours in the range that I would turn my nose up at the thought of even tying on, let alone catching bream on them. I was worried about trying to catch fish on the handful of bright pink colours in the range, but I couldn't say no to a challenge.

I filled the front hatch of my kayak with all of the packets and used a lucky dip system to select colours, changing after each fish. Generally, the system I fished has good water clarity with 4+ foot of visibility on bright sunny days. On this day however, the recent rain had put a lot of sediment into the water. Going into this session I was really worried about the bright colours that I normally wouldn't even give a second glance at a tackle shop... and the first colour I pulled out was chartreuse sparkle, something I hadn't used for bream previously.

It looked surprisingly good in the dirty water and within a couple of casts I had a fish in the boat. From there my confidence grew and whatever came out of the hatch was fished with purpose. Fishing is such a mental game and knowing that you have a bait that can get bit, no matter the situation, helps put the odds in your favour. For myself, the ZMan 2.5" GrubZ is the lure that delivers time and time again. I had to get the preconceived idea that colour plays a major factor out of my head and keep casting. I knew that all I had to do was get the ZMan GrubZ into the correct locations to get the bites. It was that simple. Keep the lure in the strike zone and eventually you will get the bites.

It took me a morning session, on a highly pressured Melbourne waterway, to achieve my goal of catching a fish on every colour GrubZ. I was surprised by the consistency of the bites. Each bait took no more than five minutes before getting a bite and putting a fish into the kayak. At the end of the day there were a few colours that I was extremely impressed with, by the way they looked in the water and the slightly larger calibre of fish they were catching. Hardy Head and Glow Bone were the two colours that represented a small baitfish the best and swimming them through the channels in the weed accounted for some surprising results. They are both colours that I will be throwing a lot more regularly!

When I am fishing, I generally follow a simple guide to selecting soft plastic colours and that is based around water clarity. In clear water I will throw translucent or natural colours. As the water clarity drops, I am selecting a colour lure that is visible and throws a good silhouette, while still looking natural. After fishing with ZMan GrubZ for years, here is a list of colours that are my personal preference for different water colours. And if in doubt, throw Motor Oil or Midnight Oil.

Clear Water / 4+ feet of visibility

• Bloodworm
• Hardy head
• Glow bone

Tannin Stained / 2 foot of visibility

• Copper Penny
• Pumpkin Seed
• Watermelon Red
• Gudgeon
• Chartreuse Sparkle

Dirty / Muddy Water / <1 foot of visibility

• Black
• Greasy Prawn
• Midnight Oil
• Motor Oil

All Rounders

• Motor Oil
• Midnight Oil

There's a few of my favourites for different water conditions and hopefully they can help fast track your fishing success. At the end of the day I had successfully completed the challenge set and the ZMan 2.5" GrubZ had again proven itself as a bream favourite. Looking forward to the next challenge and the places that fishing takes me.

Cheers, Tomas