The White Light Broadcast

White lights, kill bites. In my experience, this is not just an opinion- it is a fact.

Now, you might be saying to yourself “but this one time a truck with headlights came up and the fishing didn’t even slow down.” Sure. I’ve had situations where a flash or a GoPro light did nothing to the bite, too. But that is still just some bites. It’s not all bites.

To be frank, the most important bites are probably the most sensitive to the white light. That is, a single or couple 40-plus-pound bass hunting a sand bar or a boulder field are very likely to be impacted by a light, versus 20-pound fish blitzing on bunker. But even if you don’t believe that, there are, without question, bites that are turned off by lights- size being irrelevant. So even if it’s just 10 bites in a 100, is it really worth you not being disciplined with your light?

But I digress- that isn’t even the point of this article. The point I wanted to make is: ignore all that. Fine. Accept it doesn’t affect the bite at all. That a 60-pound bass will hit no matter what. The other problem with lights that so many anglers don’t understand is that they telegraph where you’re fishing, what you’re doing, and how much you’re catching.

I- unfortunately- recently went to fish a spot that can have anglers in the spring. I had nothing to do, my other tides weren’t great, and I had an option to fish later in the night anyways. Without any details, I observed a slew of anglers with head lamps on across a small stretch of shore. It was BANANAS! And yeah, they were catching fish. But they were small. And I could make out every single thing they were doing, what they were doing wrong, and what I could do to perform better.

The thing is? Had I not saw the lights, I wouldn’t even have stopped in that general area. I would have just blown by it. But now, I’ve filed it away. I won’t go fish it with them there, but they gave me a tremendous amount of “scouting data” without me having to do a single thing.

You never know who is watching. It doesn’t matter if it’s calm conditions (Season 3, Episode 7!) or rough- “we’re” out there, and we’re watching you. Dave Anderson wrote about this in Surfcaster’s Journal in his article “The Unknown Man.” It could be some guy that is trying to figure out who you are. It could be some guy trying to see what you’re doing to steal your spot. It could be some guy trying to see if you’re allowed to be there to get you towed. And worst of all, it could be a guy who is smart and observational, who is absorbing all the information you’re broadcasting just by using your light too much.