Most likely the jerk had a better location. Thats all.
Fish tend to hold in a certain spot and you probably were not in the zone.

If you really care to find out what people are using, get a good bino. You are free to gather light we used to do that on salt water. As soon as someone hooked a fish, oh they are using blue ... but trust me, its more about location than anything else when it comes to stacked up fish. Unless you were fishing for sprigers and wanted to fish legal, in which eggs might come handy.