I have written plenty about my ahi colors. During season I keep the spread to about five color families and I do not stray much from them. But a big part of the year the target is not ahi. When mahi and marlin are the goal, or when I am pulling lures through green water instead of deep blue, my color thinking changes. These are the colors I reach for when it is not about ahi, and the stories behind them.
As always, a lot of different ways work. This is just what works for me and my crew.
Gay Bob is probably one of my all time favorite colors for mahi and marlin. For mahi it is my killer for sure. If you are looking for a good mahi lure, especially if you fish rough water, a Gay Bob invert will do good for you. We run the combination all the way up to the 12 inch Ante Plunger, and I have skirted 12 inch Gay Bob inverts specifically to match that skirt set.
We are pretty set on our purple lineup. There is the OG purple milky, skirted in milky. There is the purple silver we do with Reel Addiction Sport Fishing. And as we got better at painting, we did the Milky 2.0.
The Purple Disco has its own story. I have a couple of guys on Kauai who spent the past couple of years running purple salmon skirts on just a regular standard purple head, and they have been having really good luck with it. So I painted a head to match the skirt. I did not care for my first paint job and I took that lure off the website, even though it was an effective lure. Later we made the Purple Disco to match those same purple salmon skirts. We made one lure, we liked it, we gave it to Reel Addiction, and they immediately started catching fish on it.
The Purple Disco is designed to put out flash in all different directions, so it gives you a lot of flash on those sunny days. We already knew the skirt combination worked. Put the two together and you have a winning lure.
The blue purple Jetted Moke lives in this same family, and that one has been doing really well for us. A lot of guys have been catching all kinds of fish on it, marlin included.
The Golden Child came from the yellow shell. Back in the day, lures had shell inserts, and from what I know, white shell that lays around long enough turns yellow. That aged yellow shell look is what the Golden Child paint is going for. Guys who like gold really like gold, and a lot of guys do not know about this one. It is a good tab to have in your box when everyone else is pulling blues and pinks.
When I am trolling the forty or working green water instead of deep blue, I like an opelu type color: bluish green with orange and white in the skirt. I have seen the same idea done with a creamsicle or a pink profile instead. It is a really good green water combination.
One more mahi note. Mahi love small lures. When they start to get finicky, they will shy away from even a 7 inch lure, but they will keep biting a 6 inch or a 5 inch. Keep that in mind before you swap through every color in the box. I covered my whole small lure program in my 7 inch and 6 inch guide.
If you want the shortest version of all this: ice blue and a purple are probably the two most common inside colors that I run. Those two families, plus a Gay Bob for the mahi, cover most of what I do when ahi season is over.
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