Lighting For Squid

[John Calisi]

Very interesting topic. Here's some of my own observation based on my recent 2 trips to Newport.


First, when you fish near dock/bridge, there are generally lights around, so we are not fishing in complete darkness. Squid have huge eyes which I believe make them excellent eye-sight, they can see the jigs well in low light condition. What I think the extra light we bring on (latern or flood light) serves more for our human being to see what's swimming down there, plus the extra light attracts shrimps/bait fish (but then how do we know shrimp/bait fish are not there without our light?).


I fished the same spot last Thursday and Friday night where there is public light around, but I cannot make out what's swim down there without the additional latern light. 1st night (Thur) we didn't use the latern because it was drizzling all the time while 2nd night I did light up my latern. 1st night we caught squid from mid-night to 3-4am without extra light, a pretty consistent bite for 5 people. 2nd night squid started biting 8:20pm and I lighted up my latern around 9pm while the bite only lasted until 9:40pm. My latern was on till mid-night but I only caught 3 squid after 9:40pm. The only advantage that the latern provided was that I could see the whole school when they appeared (or turned red) and got my heart pounded.


Now the other topic is sometimes squid bite and sometimes they don't. Thursday night experience - I used three 3 inch jigs(not Yo-zuri) and slayed the squid (almost 1 squid per cast) while 4 other people only caught 1 here or there with their bigger Yo-zuri jigs. This went on for about an hour and the complete opposite happened. 2 people (a Vietname guy and his girlfriend) slayed the squid while I caught zero. I could not figure out why, until half-an-hour later I switched to the bigger Yo-zuri jigs and started catching the squid. This shows that the squid was down there all the time, they prefer certain size/color/design jigs from time to time. My 3 inch jigs have 2 lead balls inside (which I believe making some noise when jigging). When I talked to Kevin (tackle shop in Newport), he said the smaller jigs are used when the squid bite is picky, and he carries some really small jigs (only 1 inch I think) that he said is for really picky bite.

Andy, what bridge were you catching the squid from?