purpose of kill spots

[Tman2]

What is the purpose of these? I know bluegills or sunnies have some black dots on them naturally, but why put it on most painted baits?

[blackjack]

Kinda like a bullseye, Some species of shad and herring have them.

[pirkfan]

I put a red dot right at the tail of some of my jigging spoons, I think it directs the fish's attention towards the business end of the lure, maybe represents a wound, blood spot, caudal vein. I also tie in a couple of red hackle tips if I'm using a bucktail hook on the lure

[Travis]

"Kill spots" are anlgers representation of things we see on bait fish. This may seem sort of simple but in fact holds the main purpose. The "kill spot" is truely a false eye spot and draws attention from the predator. The false eye spot was evolved to cause confusion in predators. Many fish have false eye spots located near the caudal fin region. The basic premise is two fold. One the predator strikes at the tail thinking they are attacking the head region and the little fish get to live another day with a torn up fin and missing a few scales. Or the predator becomes confused and can't make and effective strike do to undecisiveness on where to aim the strike. In theory a predator will attemt to strike towards the head. The fish is oriented in the correct position to swallow (those fin rays fold back easily go the other direction and well not so great) and more likely to catch the fish if you strike at the head because generally that is the direction they prey tries to escape. How many fish jet backwards?

In theory we all should put kill spots dead center of cranks to increase the likely hood of getting the most amount of hooks in ones mouth. But honestly don't think that it matters as much. I am sure many will swear by them.

[Lure--Prof]

Ictheologists accept that the reason for the dot is to confuse a predator into thinking that the distance between the actual eye, and the false eye of the preyfish, is actually the distance between its real eyes; therefore the predator is mislead into interpreting this horizontally viewed eye combination as that of the head-on view of a much larger fish, i.e., too large to attack. Therefore, the smaller you want your bait to appear, the closer the false eye should be to the actual eye.

Dean

[mark poulson]

I think, since prey fish like shad are schooling fish, the spot adds confusion to predators when they attack the school. Single bait fish are doomed anyway, without the "safety in numbers" school. If they are detected alone, they're a meal. I put spots on my lures to simulate what the natural prey looks like, to make them a little more real looking. I don't think the bass I fish for hit the spots, but, like the red I add in the gill area, the spots are meant to say, "I'm real. Eat me".

[jamie]

I agree with you mark. I like to fish with lures as natural as possible. If the main forage is shad then you throw a natural shad ,spots and all.