The “Electric Chicken”…what is it? I was in South Carolina a few years ago fishing on the beach in late September, and I went into bait store on the pier to purchase some live bait and some “Old Boys” with deceiving eyes were sitting around a barrel of iced-down “Millers” talking fishing. After asking for some live mullet, they began to try to convince me to try the “Electric Chicken.” Well I had never heard of an “Electric Chicken” before, and I thought to myself what in the ___is an “Electric Chicken? One of the guys got up and pulled a pack off the wall, and after looking at it, I bought a pack. However, to me it looked like a “Sassy Shad” which I knew would catch fish, but it was not the imitation that caught my eye, it was the color…violet and green. I just couldn’t connect this lure with an “Electric Chicken.” For me, an “Electric Chicken” was one that got his pecker stuck in a light socket, if you can picture that. Maybe some of you are thinking the same thing.
So, that started me to research this “Electric Chicken” phenomenon. As it turns out, the “Electric Chicken” is not a specific lure at all, but a laminate color pattern with one color layered over the other, and there is some scientific rational to this phenomenon. Most lures sold as an “Electric Chicken” have a chartreuse bottom. Chartreuse is a color between green and yellow. Chartreuse is the most visible color to the eye, and the most complementary color of chartreuse is violet, which is a shade of purple and is a mixture of red and blue. If you place chartreuse on the bottom of a lure and place violet, the most opposite color of chartreuse on the top, you have the most extreme eye catching colors for a lure.
There are other “eye-catching” color combinations for the “Electric Chicken” which come from “complementary colors.” Complementary colors are colors opposite each other on the color wheel. They contrast, enhance and intensify one another because they do not share common colors. Red and green complement one another because green is made of blue and yellow. Some of the best complementary colors are red and green, blue and orange and purple and yellow. These are colors directly across from one another on the color wheel. Complementary colors rarely look pleasing when placed together, but they can be striking in appearance and may be extremely vibrant and show extreme contrast to fish.
I have said all of that to say this. Last weekend I had the privilege to fish with my sister. As our history goes, I usually put more fish in the boat than she does by far, but this weekend was a little different. At the end of the day in 89 degree heat, she had a 26+bag of 10 bass (all released without harm), and I had O. Yes...O! This didn’t include the 5 pounder she lost in the motor. How did she do it? She had picked up a pack of “Electric Chicken Grubs” from Wal-Mart a few years ago with a chartreuse belly and a violet back. I didn’t think much about it when she started catching fish with it, but at the end of day, she sure put it on me. Stubbornly, I stuck to my confidence lures and blanked. What was interesting about her technique was she fished the “Electric Chicken” very slow in 4 to 6 ft of water over grassbeds. I think it was the slow presentation along with the “Electric Chicken” colors of chartreuse and violet that did me in on that day. Another fact to keep in mind…bass will visit grassbeds on hot days because of the higher oxygen content and food source.
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