Ultimate Guide to Buying a Fishing Light
If you're looking to buy a fishing light, you've come to the right place. There's a lot to consider when buying a fishing light and we're here to discuss every available option for every situation - no matter the purpose. Whether you're looking for an underwater, above water, portable, floating, LED, metal halide, mercury vapor or various other types of fishing lights.
Finding the Right Fishing Light
The first step in finding the right fishing light is figuring out what exactly the purpose the fishing light will serve for you. Are you going to be using it for your personal residence? Is it for a lake house or beach house you will be visiting on occasion? Is it for rental property? If it's for your house - is your house on open water or is it on a canal? Do you have nearby neighbors? How deep is the water you'll have the fishing light? There's many questions we'll cover to find the best fishing light for you.
Quick Guide
Choosing a Fishing Light for Your Rental Property
Selecting a Fishing Light for Your Beach House
Buying a Fishing Light for Your Lake House
The Best Fishing Light for Condominiums
Summary - Recommendation for the Buying the Best Fishing Light
Choosing a Fishing Light for Your Rental Property
As a landlord, it is in your best interest to provide as much value to your rental property as possible with a minimal cost. One of the biggest value-add features you can add to your waterfront home is a fishing light. Not only does the fishing light attract bait fish, which attract bigger fish; but the bigger fish attract more customers for you to help keep your property rented. A fishing light can serve as an attractive amenity, no different from having a pool available for your rental property.
Aside from attracting more customers, there are some key traits you want to consider as a landlord when choosing a fishing light for your rental property:
1.) Your rental property is meant for generating revenue and appeasing your customers, stay away from maintenance nightmares.
To be up front and honest - underwater fishing lights require maintenance. Yes it's true that the heat from regularly running your underwater fishing lights every night will burn off barnacles, but that is only on the bulb itself. That does not account for the housing. A barnacle deposit can begin to form in less than 5 hours. Underwater fishing lights must be cleaned regularly to prevent barnacle overgrowth eventually causing the light to overheat or lose its brightness.
Due to this, we recommend staying away from underwater fishing lights for rental properties unless you or your property manager plan on regularly maintaining the lights. Choose an Above Water Fishing Light instead.
2.) Consider your neighbors and surroundings when choosing your fishing light.
If your rental home is on a canal, it's best to stay away from lights that might flood into their windows. The Above Water Green Fishing Spot Light was designed for this purpose - it concentrates the light beam into one distinct area. A fishing spot light will minimize the amount of light spread to homes across the canal or next door to you, making for happy neighbors.
If your rental home is on open water or an intracoastal waterway, then you can explore flood options for above water fishing lights. Fishing flood lights are beneficial because they illuminate a large water surface area and naturally bring fish up to the surface where it is easier to catch them. If you have a dock or pier on your rental property, we strongly recommend mounting Above Water Green Fishing Flood Lights to enhance the fishing experience.
3.) Is your rental fishing property on shallow flats or deep water?
If your rental property is on shallow flats, then you are most likely not in a canal and you are a good ways from deep water. Due to this, there is only one option for you to consider - an Above Water Green Fishing Flood Light.
This flood fishing light will illuminate the most water out of all the other options and is most likely to bring fish in close where it is easiest to catch them. Underwater lights will not travel as far simply because light does not travel as far underwater as it does above water and an above water spot light will not illuminate enough surface area to be valuable. The fish will be coming from a distance on flats.
If your rental property is in deep water (8 to 10 ft deep or greater), then we advise you to consider an overhead spot fishing light. These lights will do a better job penetrating deep into the water column and bringing fish up to the surface from greater depths. 8 to 10 ft deep is on the low end of the depths, but these lights perform even better when in 15 to 20 ft water depths.
Most value-adds for rental property come at a tremendous expense, but fishing lights can be relatively inexpensive and add a whole new dynamic to your rental property.
Selecting a Fishing Light for Your Beach House
Waterfront beach homes are unique because they are exposed to one of the most difficult outdoor elements around: saltwater. It corrodes everything - even the door handles on your house from salty air. In addition to this, the saltwater is host to barnacles which will literally grow on anything and everything. It takes barnacles less than 5 hours to start growing on an underwater object - that includes fishing lights.
1.) Is your beach house your primary residence or is it a second home?
If your beach house is your primary residence, and you are ok with on-going maintenance, then you may find it beneficial to utilize an underwater green fishing light to bring fish in close to your dock at night. Many people like the underwater lights due to the ambiance they provide when they light up the water from underneath much like a pool light. Underwater fishing lights typically attract fish at greater depths compared to above water fishing lights, above water will bring fish to the water surface. The biggest cause for concern with underwater fishing lights is they can be a maintenance nightmare. It's important to learn how to remove barnacle build-up from underwater fishing lights. As we previously mentioned - it takes less than 5 hours for a barnacle to start to grow on a light. This is inevitable no matter what underwater fishing light you choose.
If your beach house is a second home and you're not always there, then you may not want to worry about the continuous maintenance associated with a permanently installed underwater green fishing light. The underwater effect and ambiance can still be achieved, however, by simply choosing a portable underwater green fishing light. Using this type of light will allow you to easily remove the light when you are gone, and drop the light in the water while you're there. Many people think you have to leave the light on while you're gone to train fish to come - but that's not the case realistically. If you don't believe us - try it and see for yourself. This method will save you a lot of hassle and maintenance issues.
The above photo is our Above Water Green Fishing Flood Lights mounted to a customers dock in Galveston, TX
Another option if you want to avoid maintenance altogether, is to choose a maintenance free fishing light. These consist of above water flood fishing lights and above water spot fishing lights. Both are maintenance free and do a phenomenal job attracting fish to the water surface, where they are easiest to catch.
Buying a Fishing Light for Your Lake House
Lake houses are on freshwater, which is a far easier beast to deal with than saltwater. They also don't have to deal with barnacle build up on literally everything. However, if invasive zebra mussels are introduced to the lake where your house is - they can be similarly invasive and latch on to anything and everything, just like a saltwater barnacle.
The more suspect cause for concern is underwater algae growth and moss, which can cover underwater fishing lights. Due to this, if you choose an underwater fishing light option, we recommend you mount it to a "crab trap" or similar object to raise it up off the bottom of the lake and clear of moss. Crab traps are cheap ($10 or less) and very lightweight, meaning pulling the underwater light in for cleaning and inspection is super easy to do. We advise against using concrete cinderblocks to prop up your fishing light as they are heavy (more difficult to retrieve) and can sink the fishing light into soft bottoms and are more prone to fraying wire attached to the fishing light.
It takes algae approximately 10 days to start growing on underwater fishing lights in freshwater. A full algae bloom can occur in as little as 30 days. Due to this, we recommend you clean and inspect your underwater fishing lights at least once every two weeks.
If you don't want to hassle with the maintenance of an underwater fishing light for your lake house, then we recommend considering maintenance free options which include above water fishing lights - available in spot or flood.
An above water fishing spot light is great for lake houses in deeper water ways (8 to 10 ft or greater depths) because the intense focused beam will penetrate deep through the water.
An above water fishing flood light is great for lake houses in shallower water ways up to 8 ft deep or on open water. Flood fishing lights do a great job illuminating a large water surface area and we tend to see fish come up to the surface, making them easier to catch compared to underwater fishing light options.
The Best Fishing Light for Condominiums
Condominiums are similar to conventional waterfront rental homes, but they have a whole lot more foot traffic and the wear-and-tear aspect is on another level. Maintenance is the #1 cause for concern whether you own a single unit in a condo or the the entire condominium complex. Due to this, we don't recommend permanently installed underwater fishing lights for this scenario.
If you own a single unit in your condominium complex, we advise you consider a portable underwater fishing light or stick with an above water fishing light option. A portable underwater fishing light can be deployed when you're fishing but once you're done you can bring it back inside. A portable option is better to minimize the risk of theft, use, or abuse from your fellow condo mates.
An above water fishing light can prove to beneficial, especially one that is portable and capable of running on batteries. Our above water fishing flood light is capable of running on 24V DC battery or a 110v AC wall/generator outlet. To make it portable, we've had customers mount it to tripods or even dolly's to temporarily set the light up for night fishing.
If you own an entire condominium complex, we advise you stick with an above water fishing light option. Underwater fishing lights are maintenance intensive and can result in unnecessary added costs primarily due to labor required to keep the lights clean from on-going cleaning.
We recommend Above Water Fishing Flood Lights for illuminating shallow water areas and covering a lot of water surface area, to attract fish to the water surface making it easier to catch them with top water baits and lures.
If you have a dock or pier on your condominium complex, we recommend Above Water Fishing Spot Lights at the end of the pier to shine into deeper water and bring fish up from greater depths.
Summary - Recommendation for the Buying the Best Fishing Light
At the end of the day, it all boils down to how involved you want to be with your fishing lights and what you're trying to accomplish. Both underwater and above water fishing lights can equally attract fish and create a night time photo worthy ambiance.
If you want a fishing light that is complete maintenance free, then you have two options: Above Water Green Flood Fishing Light or Above Water Green Spot Fishing Light. Both of these are great options, the main difference is whether you want a spot beam or a flood beam.
Above Water Green Flood Fishing Light
This flood style fishing light is ideal for shallow water and areas where you want to illuminate a large water surface area.
Above Water Green Spot Fishing Light
This spot style fishing light is ideal for deeper waters or areas where you don't want to spread out the light as much and irritate neighbors. This style light can nearly imitate an underwater green fishing light without any maintenance concerns.
If you want an underwater fishing light and do not have any concern for the maintenance required in cleaning growth off the light every two weeks, then we recommend you consider this Underwater Green Fishing Light.