Hey guys, I am making some really bright LED’s for fishing lights. I am trying to decide green or white? white would be brighter but I can make the greens really bright too. So what do you guys think raise bait/stripers better green or white? I can keep you posted on this little project…
Wellcraft V20, 175 Yamaha
I’ve used both. This year I picked up a green HydroGlow and it works great, but in previous years I’ve been able to draw plenty of bait with white lights too. So, from my experience, I can’t really say one is better than the other. You may want to run it by Richard or David and see what they suggest.
What kind of design you have in mind? You wanting to make something that is fully submersible?
'07 198 DLX Carolina Skiff
FS90 Suzuki
I use aquarium acrylic and bond with a chemical weld. Works great with luxeon star leds a good driver and good heat sinks. Brighter than anything that I have ever seen. I am going green and a row of whites and yeah fully submersible. I might mount to boat right under water when i work out kinks. I will be using a 40 degree projector lens on all leds. it will be in all 1500 lumens of light… pretty solid
Wellcraft V20, 175 Yamaha
Cool…post a pic when you’re done
'07 198 DLX Carolina Skiff
FS90 Suzuki
The bait guys use high pressure sodium lights at 400 watts. An EU2000 Honda generator will run two with no problem. They’re the type used in parking lots and such. I have two green LED arrays from Coastal Night Lights http://www.coastalnightlights.com/ that I have mounted to my trolling motor that draw bait very well. The HPS lights are a yellow hue and do better than the metal hydride which are bright white. If I had to choose green or white I’d go with green.
I’ve been playing with LEDs over my reef aquarium. I have a handful of green/cyan Rebels and a pile of cool white Cree XPG.
Once i get moved into Summerville and settle in, I’m going to do something very similar to what you are doing, AQ. I’d love to hear from you on how it works.
I had a similar idea, using one of those cheap “critter cage” acrylic tanks from Petsmart and gluing a cheap lid on it. I have a small pile of CPU heatsinks and similar items.
By the way, I’m not sure I’d use the 40 degree optics, I think you want to put them all flat across the heatsink and shine the light downward. Luxeon stars usually have a 125 or 140 degree light angle, which is near perfect for what we’re doing. The 40-degree optics will shoot the light directly downward and won’t draw animals/bait from the periphery (ie, the surface, where they are probably most likely to be). But I could be totally wrong lol.
Hey Matt. You are right about the 40 degree optics. I dont need to penetrate the water as mush as letting the wide angle disperse the light. the problem with the cree and luxeons is anything over 1 watt is going to get to hot. you have to heatsink them. Right now I am trying to design my acrylic box with some aluminum or other heat sinks epoxied into the enclosure. Im still working on design. I will keep you guys posted. Its going to be green and bright! I am gonna mount to on transom as well for fishing or effects. maybe more for effects but I want transom lights haha.
Wellcraft V20, 175 Yamaha
Let me know if you need any heat sinks. I can get some cpu/chipset heatsinks from some scrapped boards if u need them.
'07 198 DLX Carolina Skiff
FS90 Suzuki
I found these at Academy Sports. I don’t know how you could build a light this bright this cheap and they work great. The baitfish were so thick you could hear them hitting the pontoon. With the light submerged we were scooping the bait up with a bait net.
http://www.academy.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_10051_12029_-1?Ntt=Brinkmann&Ntk=All
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Originally posted by The AQHey Matt. You are right about the 40 degree optics. I dont need to penetrate the water as mush as letting the wide angle disperse the light. the problem with the cree and luxeons is anything over 1 watt is going to get to hot. you have to heatsink them. Right now I am trying to design my acrylic box with some aluminum or other heat sinks epoxied into the enclosure. Im still working on design. I will keep you guys posted. Its going to be green and bright! I am gonna mount to on transom as well for fishing or effects. maybe more for effects but I want transom lights haha.
Wellcraft V20, 175 Yamaha
You’re definitely right about them getting hot, but nothing compared to a halogen or halide. Also they are quite tough. For our purposes, we really don’t need to get overboard on heatsinks. CPU heatsinks would work just fine. The only real problem I forsee is the air inside the acrylic enclosure getting too hot and expanding, so maybe do something to minimize the air in the acrylic box. Maybe displace some of it with something like fiberglass insulation (which doesn’t easily burn easily).
If you adhere them with a good thermal epoxy and drive them around 600-700mA, you should be fine. No need really to drive them any higher than that if they are normal 3w types.
Matt your right I plan to drive around 700mah. I was going to cool with aluminum backplate. But the acrylic submerged will pull heat off them if they are glued with thermal compound… but only a few would be needed and it wouldn’t be too hot. And test they will be brighter than that halogen light with tons less draw on batteries. These lights will pump out probably 1000 lumens they will be awesome. I may pour a mold for the housing if the acrylic doesn’t make me happy.
Wellcraft V20, 175 Yamaha
If they draw the same number of fish, one possible advantage of green is that it is better for night vision.
In a pinch, I have a Nitecore Tiny Monster that uses three CREE XM-L LEDs that puts out a good beam for night fishing. It’s waterproof and can run at 1100 lumens for 3 hours, 550 lumens for almost 8 hours, and 200 lumens for 18(!) hours on rechargeable 18650s. The beam angle is pretty floody too. Need a green filter for it!
Tidewater 196DC
Yamaha F115
Pungo 120I wouldn’t use a green filter, it actually reduces a significant amount of your light (it will drop to maybe 150-200 lumens if I had to guess!). The fish will still be attracted to the rest of the white spectrum 
If you guys want to see some awesome DIY LED stuff used over reef aquariums by folks here in the Carolinas, check this out. I’m “Redfishsc” on that site.
http://www.carolinafishtalk.com/forum/diy-section/21735-diy-led-thread.html