Red lights and zooplankton?

[markinohio]

On a few lakes that I fish, a few minutes after I turn on the lights in my shack the zooplankton or whatever renders my sonar virtually useless. Anybody use red lights in their shack, and do they minimize the mess on the sonar?

Thanks!

[Ronnie D]

Of all the colors in a spectrum, red has the highest wave length, violet being the lowest. Most of the slushies i know use green lights, but never seen any used w/ optics

[stripernut]

I use red lights often when fishing both soft and hard water to keep from spooking the fish (there is a difference between a stationary white light and a moving light (and moving shadows in a stationary light) I have not had a problem with zooplankton, but I think that has more to do with the waters I fish and my style of fishing. Give it a try, the red light will not wipe out your night vision if nothing else.

[FishingCowboy]

A few places we fish the plankton drifts in while our underwater lights (green) are on. We have seen on older sonars/flashers the blanket effect of the plankton without improving the fishing attraction. So we learned to cycle the lights on (10-15 minutes) and off (the blanket goes way) and watch the fish (crappie) come in from the outskirts and feed. Doing this seemed to increase our catch as the fish get in a feeding frenzy and hit anything floating in the water. If you have a gain option, try turning down your gain so it's not so sensitive and only reflects larger hits (fish). Only reason you need a high gain is to send the sound wave further away and get a rebound at a distance.