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.