Guide to Understanding The Fish Egg Life Cycle & Color Phases

For a newbie egg colors can be intimidating or confusing as to why there are so many colors when it comes to trout beads. “glow nuke'“, “flaked out colors” or hell….BUBBLE GUM? Yes there is a purpose to almost every color and many different reasons why for so many different color and size options. Colors that are bright and opaque such as Barnes Bomber and Orange Krush are great for low light and stained or darker fresh waters from a thaw or fresh water rise. Opaque (non-translucent) colors help to not leak light through the egg therefore no light will penetrate and leak its color qualities, presenting the most potent color display possible.



STAGE 1 FRESH/LIVE EGG- Fresh eggs appear translucent/clear with tints of gold, yellow and orange or even red from salmon. Colors like Fire and Nat Roe are the go to colors when fresh fish are in the waters. When a fresh run is suspected, it’s very likely that you won’t be the only one at the stream stretching drifts. As angler pressure rises through the first hours of the day, a lot of the fish can be spooked and pressured and that where the Nat Roe, or Fire colors will be a great pick.

STAGE 2. FRESH DEAD EGG- After a few days or even a week after eggs have landed in the beds of the stream and water temps around 40-45 degrees, eggs will become damaged from UV rays of the sun leaving the eggs to become opaque. Colors that have glow like The Nuke, work great because of the UV color effects. Rose’, Pumpkin, the Ghost Pearl Series are great colors.

STAGE 3. DEAD EGG BITE- With time, eggs that are banged around and aged tend to get larger in size from water log and turn really opaque. Larger 5/16 or 3/8 Cheese, Bubble Gum, Dead Roe, Super Nova are great starters for the opaque line up for dead egg bites.