deep lights and your thoughts/ideas!

[kai akua]

would any of you sword guys be interested in a light that goes down past 200ft? i am thinking of building one, and was wondering if it is a worth cause? also do any of you guys belive thier is a market for deep lights? 200ft to say 500ft (more than 500ft?)?

this is just a random thought! hope it sparks some interest!

Alohas!

Robbie B.

[hannaman]

Their is the electralumes that alot of us use, they go down up to 2000 feet and operate with 2 dd batteries. We attach them to the leaders and send em down.
www.electralume.com

[kai akua]

no i mean like a biger light, like a hydraglow. i am familar with the LP lights, work great but they are the wrong color. the wave length is off about by 40nm with the blue and green (same as the hydraglow).

maybe i was not to accurate in my question. whould a light similar in intensity to a hydroglow, be a benafical thing to swordmen at 200ft plus?

the LP lights use two AA lithium's.

Robbie B.

[hannaman]

I meant to say AA. The only thing about a 200 foot deep hydraglow is the fish are attracted to it but mostly keep there distance approximately a 100 feet with the exception of a few that swim right up to it. So your tip rod under the hydraglow needs to be at 300 feet or deeper or above the light at a 100 feet. I would rather bait em closer with the hydraglow at the boat. Think of where the halo stops to place your baits.

[kai akua]

i was thinking the same thing. but just wanted to here some more input from others beore i start a project.

thanx for the input!

Robbie B.

[greg1]

What do you mean by wrong wavelength? and 40nm?

Personally, I don't fish swords enough to invest too much money in something like that. How much would yours cost and what would you do to keep your fishing line from getting tangled in it when a fish is hooked? Would you have to retrieve it everytime you hooked something? I'd hate to have to retrieve it everytime a shark took my bait and then re-deploy.

I have a 2 foot hydroglow now, but I also use it for inshore trout fishing.

I personally wouldn't be a customer, but there may be a larger market than I realize.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

[LHPfish]

I think you are thinking to far into it........ :shock:

[kai akua]

You wonder why blue and green do well correct? They each only cover 1/3 of the visible light waves perceived by swords. Blue covers 1/3 the lower, while green cover the upper 1/3, however their is a light wave in the middle that covers 100% of this. As far as a sword is concerned this light wave will penetrate 2/3 further in the water compared to a regular blue or green light. Light waves of blue are about 472 nm and green is about 525nm. A swordfish’s eye is most sensitive to light waves of about 507nm which falls right in the middle. Now the color that fits this, is called cyan, it transmits at about 508nm. Very similar to the new green we see in the stop lights (505nm).

The swordfish perceives light from 470nm to 520nm with the max peak at about 500nm to 508nm. Hope this sheds the light on some of my questions. You can easily try to modify your LP’s with cyan colored leds and see what happens. Just an idea!

Robbie B.

(just had an earth quake, :shock: )

[hannaman]

Where can you get a Cyan colored led?

[kai akua]

you can do a search on the net. i belive the LP's use a 5mm led, maybe some one can correct me on this. i am planing on doing the mod to a LP, but i havent tottaly tooken one apart yet.

here is one place on the net that has them:

http://www.superbrightleds.com/leds.htm

listed as aqua, with a wave length of 507 and 505nm. the bigger the mcd the better.

hope this helps, thier also alot of other places on the net that has them you just need to search for them.

hope this helps!

Alohas, Robbie B!

[hannaman]

Nice site Kia. So even with the Cyan colored leds they would basically be good for the new or darker part of the moon phase.

[kai akua]

thats what my thinking is.

if i get time this weekend i will modify a LP and post it on the net. i just need to take mine apart and measure the led size so i can get the right ones to put in. maybe even brighter ones.

here is some info on rods and cones of tuna and swordies:

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PFRP/pdf/Jan-Mar2004.pdf

Alohas!

Robbie.

[FinalPoint]

That article is great, I read it a while ago. I don't think a light as strong as a hydraglow is necessary down deeper. Sometimes it is nice to really light up a bait (i.e. electralume, flasher, and a lightstick), but too much light may be a problem. The setup that people use now works. Some of the hydraglows can be dropped 20 ft or more down anyway, which I think would be sufficient seeing how much light they produce.

[greg1]

I read that article. Very interesting, but I don't see how that affects what swords and tuna can see.

My background may not have prepped me for what I was reading.

Can you give a quick sum.?

[SM]

I think Robbie knows, as we talked about this in the middle of the night, my buddy who works for the IATTC has recovered archival tags on bigeye showing dives to 2700 meters with the fish showing a core body temp of 5 Celsius. Pretty amazing stuff.

[kai akua]

greg1

First and foremost, my disclaimer: I am a fisherman, not a scientist. Take what I say with a grain of salt; ponder the idea with the information provided by other sources. If it doesn’t work, you never heard from me. If it does, please send all the credit to... (Joke)

Now if a swordie (also proven true with big eye and stripys) can see in a limited color field (i.e. color blind, like me), then it would make no sense to present lights in the water of the color it can’t see (like true red).

We humans cant see UV correct? However if I am not mistaken, some of our mammal friends can (I think I read that somewhere but I can’t remember). So would it make sense to present a quisno sub to us in the dark with a white light or a UV light? We can not see the sandwich with the UV light, but with the white light we can.

Quick note: not all white lights are the same; many are composed with different individual wave lengths.

So when it comes to fishing, it has been proven that the farthest penetrating light wave in water is around 510nm, which is a bluish green color. By no mishap, a swordies peak optical reception is around 508nm. This allows them to use all the light available in the depths of the water.

With evolution and that stuff, a swordie has no real need to see in the reds and yellows since they get filtered out very early in the water column. According to their study the swordies don’t even pick up reds or yellows, much like how we can’t see UV light. So by putting down a red light stick, you have introduced literally no light to the environment. So it was almost useless. However, I am sure that those red and yellow light sticks do emit trace amounts of the visible spectrum detected by the swordies eye. (Red light sticks probably do emit trace amounts of green or blue, etc.)

Why is green and blue the most successfully color used? Why is LP making light sticks now that feature a blue and a green light stick? Because it is closer to the peak optical reception of 507nm. And by no accident it penetrates the water the furthest.

All I am saying is that by using the cyan color style lights you are getting more bang for your buck. I think by lighting up the world down their you will get more hits. It’s like eating at a buffet in the dark or with lights on. What’s easier?

In my search on the net I have found aqua colored light sticks (rave sites carry them for pennies), and aqua or cyan leds. The led in the LP's are 5mm FYI, and are very easy to modify, I am awaiting some mail ordered one so I can modify my LP.

Hope this gives a little more insight! Damn my head hurts, I need a beer now!

this is teh color cyan or aqua (very very very similar to what a swrod can see, compare this graph to the light reception graph of sword in the PFRP article)



here is a green spectrum



and this is a blue spectrum



Alohas!

Robbie.

[ProfessorO]

I looked over the article and here is my 2 cents. I don't think that swords
can not see any red, the charts are for maximum sensitivity, but that is
a color that their eyes are not optimized for, since red light is the first
visible band to be filtered out of sun light. However, if you put a red
glow stick at depth that light will be visible for some distance, which
is less than a blue/green stick. The sword may want to check out this
weird color at depth.

It may be that the light does a better job of attracting bait and the bait
attracts the swords.

a deep light near the boat will eventually loose you a fish. cheers, arthur

[greg1]

Cool reading guys.

The main reason I asked is becasue the natural source of light is Sun during the day and moon and stars at night.

So when reading it, I couldn't figure out why cyan would be most optimal. Seemd to me something mimicking the moon would be best.

Like I said, my background is not scientific enough. After your explanation now I see what you guys are looking at.

Very cool reading, thanks.

[RiskTaker]

Aloha Kai akua:

I recently read through this topic and the threads that followed. A lot of data, theories and conjectures based upon some intuitive feeling. Here too is my two cents worth. Plus another nickel to follow. As far as deploying a flourescent light down deep, I think the trade-offs are not in favor of a mass-marketable product. But if you are trying to be truly entreprenurial with some sort of gizmo look, at the end for the nickel comment.

But as far as using aqua LEDs (508 nm) instead of the standardized blue and green electrolumes.... I think you are onto something about choosing a light color that may be most effective for the possibility of drawing in more swordfish. But just as you may vary your spread and never fall into an absolute fixed rig deployment, so too, the lights may need to change. But I think you will need to perform a structured experiment to accomplish your objective. It is certainly nice to have an abundant amount of scientific data about certain physics theory to confirm certain facts. But I just wonder if you introduce an artificial light source that is tuned to the swordfish's most sensitive light frequency, if that may in fact be obnoxious to the fish. Rather than an optimal attractant, now tuned to deter. Just as an example, try looking at an all green monitor: ooh is that irritating, get it away from me! Perhaps imposing a tuned light to the swordfish's most sensisitive vision range may do that, maybe not. Who knows? But you can certainly find out.

So as an experiment that may cover many fishing trips and multiple party boats, I suggest you deploy the experimental aqua colored LED electrolumes with a control electrolume. Pick either the green or the blue and stick to it for a while. You will need to modify your bait presentations to include two identical tip rods, bow and stern, unless you have another non-tangle solution. Systematically deploy the tip rods in the same way: same bait (hopefully same batch of bait like a two pack of squid), same depth, identical leader setup, all except for the electrolume colors. Because you have a Bow and stern tip rod you may want to alternate the rods back and forth, to keep things fair for a given number of sample tests.

I suggest your tip rods since they may be the most reliable for repeatable experiments and also since they may be your most productive lines. Keep notes. If you discover a favoratism from either light regardless of bow or stern, I believe that will shed the proper light on your hypothesis: catch the pun. Now you will also have the proper data to support that statement.

Wow, blinded by scientific methodology, now pass me that beer!

Oh, almost forgot the nickel comment. How many times have you wanted to be able to see a picture of a swordfish in slashing action? Well instead of a deep deployed light, as an idea, how about a self power contained flash camera to take a snap-shot of a sword as it is hitting the bait. Perhaps you may be motivated to construct a rather inexpensive camera that would snap the shot when it detected a jerk on the line. If such a device were attached near the weight, aimed toward the down current bait, it seems like you may be able to catch the fish in action. Say "squidward", flash and your fish-photo is on swordfishingcentral. Perhaps the flash may scare the fish. Maybe he is already hooked-up or maybe the scare may force the hook-up by foul hooking. Who knows? Another fishing tactic? Another fishy experiment?

Enjoy the loose change. Aloha, RiskTaker

[FinalPoint]

Wow Mike. Gotta love your ideas. Slow day at the office?