By Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling
Few anglers understand the significant advantages of owning more than one pair of polarised sunnies. Different lens colours, materials, levels of light transmission, coatings, mirror finishes and frame designs not only suit changing environmental conditions, but they also cater to variations in physiology, eyesight and taste between individual anglers. In particular, lens tints play a huge role in spotting fish, locating structure and identifying colour changes or other subtle indicators. Lenses that are perfect in the middle of a bright day on a shimmering tropical sand flat may be found wanting on a heavily-overcast morning along a tannin-stained trout stream… It’s a matter of horses for courses.
As a rule of thumb, higher-light-transmission lenses with a yellow, amber, rose, copper or brown tint work best in freshwater and estuarine environments, especially with any cloud cover, while darker, lower-light transmission grey lenses are favoured in bright, marine scenarios. However, there are many nuances between a high-transmission yellow lens and a low-transmission grey one.
Mako Eyewear — a company run by anglers — understands these subtle but important differences. Mako offers a lens colour, light-transmission level, mirror coating and frame design to suit every angler and all conditions, and it also makes a wide array of prescription lenses.
For Starlo’s field demonstration of different glass tints for different conditions, view the video