Fishing with a green underwater light

Night fishing with a light is old practice. Commercial boats hung lamps over the side long before LEDs. What has changed is the lamp: a sealed green tube that draws little power and goes under the surface, where the light is not wasted on the air.

The choices are few: the power source, the strength of the light and the length of the cord. One subject deserves more care than the rest, and that is electricity near water.

The idea is a food chain. Light in dark water draws plankton, the small drifting life that many baitfish eat. The baitfish come for the plankton, and larger fish come for the bait. You fish the edge of the glow, where the hunters wait.

We will be straight about the evidence. Anglers and light makers have watched this happen for decades, and formal studies of it are few. No light puts fish in a place where there are none. A light concentrates what is already in the area.

Water swallows light quickly, and it does not swallow all colours at the same rate. Red goes first. Green and blue carry farthest, and deep water looks blue-green for that reason. A green lamp gives you the widest lit volume for each watt.

That figure is for the sun over clear ocean. A lamp in a muddy river lights a few feet. One buyer of our tube light fished Galveston Bay and reported about 6 feet of reach in murky water. Clarity sets the range more than the lamp does.

All of our fishing lights are green only. One buyer wished for a white one, and the range has none.

The first choice is not brightness. It is what you can plug into. A dock usually has a 110 V outlet. A boat, a kayak or a remote bank has a 12 V battery. The light has to match.

If you do both, the Dual-Power 200 W Fishing Light saves you buying twice. It ships with a transformer for 110 to 265 V and with battery clips and a lighter-socket adapter for 12 V.

Here is the full set with current prices. Watts and lumens are the figures from the product details.

A buyer of the folding light doubts its 40,000 lumen figure and still calls it brighter than most. We have no independent test to show you. Compare our lights with each other by these numbers, and judge them against other makes by what buyers report.

More light is not always better. In clear, shallow water a strong lamp can light the bottom like a stage, and wary fish hang far back. One buyer of our tube light marked it down for being too bright for the spot.

• Clear water under 10 feet: 200 W is plenty.
• Stained water, or 10 to 20 feet under the dock: 400 W.
• Deep or muddy water, or a wide basin you want to light across: 800 W.

Those are starting points from what buyers tell us, not a rule. If you are unsure, the folding light gives you a way to turn the output down without a dimmer: close the panels and the lit area shrinks.

A 12 V light runs from the same kind of battery as a trolling motor. Divide the watts by 12 to get the amps it draws. Then divide the battery's amp-hours by that figure for a rough run time.

The table assumes you use half of a 100 amp-hour battery, which is a common limit for lead-acid types. Read the label on your own battery. A 400 W light is a heavy load, and a small starting battery is the wrong supply for it.

A dock setup is the simplest. The work is in the first night, and after that the light can stay rigged.

From a boat you anchor first and light second. A drifting boat drags the glow away from the bait it has gathered.

The Foldable 400 W Fishing Light has hinged panels. The shape you set changes where the 400 W goes.

Three buyers of this light report that it stopped working within weeks. Others have run it without trouble and rate it highly. Both accounts are true, and the reviews deserve as close a reading as the product details.

B5 Underwater Boat Lights do not hang on a cord. A pair screws to the transom and lights the water behind the boat. Each light is 0.6 inches thin, draws 30 W on 12 V and gives 3,000 lumens.

They draw bait at anchor in the same way, on a smaller scale, and they double as courtesy lights at the dock. Buyers found the wires short for a run through the bilge, and several bedded the lights in marine sealant as well as the gasket.

Each B5 needs its own fused feed. Two lights at 30 W draw 5 amps together on 12 V. One buyer fitted 4 and warns that they add up to 10 amps, more than a spare accessory circuit may carry.

A light that lives in the water grows a coat. Algae, then slime, then barnacles in salt water. The coat blocks light and holds heat against the lens.

• Lift the light every 15 days of constant use.
• Wipe it with a soft cloth while the growth is still soft.
• Rinse with fresh water after every salt-water trip.
• Dry it before it goes into the storage bag.

Barnacles are the reason for the 15 days. Once they cement on, they do not wipe off, and scraping scratches the tube. A buyer who rinsed the light after a pier trip in salt water says it still looked new.

This is the section to read twice. A 110 V light puts mains power on a cord that ends in the water people swim in. The danger is not the light. It is any fault in the dock wiring, in a cord, or in a boat plugged into shore power.

Our 110 V lights carry a GFCI plug, which cuts the power when it senses a leak. Treat it as the last line and not the only one. Two buyers report that the plug failed early. One of them cut it off and wired the light straight to an outlet, and we ask you not to copy that.

The rule for people is simpler than the rule for wiring. Nobody swims near a dock with power on it, and nobody goes into the water to adjust a light that is plugged in. Unplug first, then reach.

A 12 V light does not carry that mains risk, which is one more reason boat anglers prefer it. A battery can still start a fire through a short circuit, so keep the clamps clean, tight and apart.

The first night teaches more than any guide. Go in with a plan and a watch, and write down what happened and when. A pattern shows after 3 or 4 nights at the same spot.

Keep the notes. Tide, wind and water colour change the result from one night to the next, and a notebook sorts out which of them mattered at your dock. Our light does the same job on a slow night as on a good one, and the notebook is how you learn the difference.

The cartons differ by power source. Check the list for the version you order, because the 12 V leads are not in the 110 V box and the reverse.

None of the lights comes with a battery or an extension lead. The 12 V tube light needs a 12 V supply of your own, and the product details say so plainly. A buyer who had not expected the lighter-socket adapter was pleased to find it next to the battery clamps.

The cord is half of the product. It carries the weight of the light, and it is the part that gets stepped on, shut in hatches and dragged over barnacles.

• Coil it in wide loops, never around your elbow.
• Keep the plug or the clamps out of the bilge and off a wet dock.
• Check the jacket for cuts before every trip, and retire a cord that shows copper.
• Store the dry light in its bag, away from sun.

Buyers describe the cord on our tube light as heavy duty. Treat it well and it stays that way.

• Leaving deck lights on, so the bait has no reason to gather at one spot.
• Resting the light on the bottom, where mud hides it.
• Running a 400 W light from a small starting battery.
• Fishing the bright centre and ignoring the dark rim.
• Leaving the light in salt water for a month without lifting it.

Each of these comes from a buyer's account or from a question sent to us. None of them is the fault of the fish.

Rules on fishing with lights differ by state, by species and sometimes by lake. Check with your state wildlife agency before the first night. A dock in a managed community may have its own rules on lights left on overnight.

Buyer ratings stand at 3.8 from 101 ratings for the green fishing light, 4.0 from 55 ratings for the foldable fishing light and 3.6 from 29 ratings for the dual-power fishing light. The praise is about brightness and the heavy cord. The complaints are about lights or plugs that failed early.