When you fish party boats in So-Cal and fly line with live bait, you always avoid using sardines or anchovies that have red eyes. Red eyes mean the fish is beat up which = a bad bait.

In freshwater bass fishing, tons of lures have red eyeballs.

Ironic right?

I've noticed when fishing striped bass with big hammers that using a red eyeball does not work as good as a silver eyeball.

On a lot of my rattletraps and cranks, I glue on silver backed eyeballs.

I think red eyeball lures are just designed to look cool to the fisherman.

Very interesting thought. Playing devil dood. Maybe some fish like there meal to be beat up a little, an easy prey(red eyes). I could see that from fat lazy largemouth. Maybe some torpedo type fish like there meal healthy to they can chase them down and keep moving. Like stripers and spots

I dunno. My red eye white big hammer was kicking the butt of whatever color eye white big hammer you were fishing last month :)

There is no doubt these days most of the lures are marketed more to the anglers than their effectiveness on fish, I think we all are aware of that. However, many freshwater forage fish do flare their gills when stressed or threatened. A red eye isn't that far way from a red flared gill and still a spot on the fish for a large fish to focus on. Red headed lures with a white body are one of the all time classic color patterns.