At What Water Depth Does Light Penetration End?

[airborne_angler]

Wondering at what depth deep water becomes dark water. My thoughts are that even if you have visibility with your eyes down to 10 feet,that the deeper the water,the less sun will penetrate,and because of this,darker baits would be a key ingredient to finding fish. So in the shallows,use lighter colored baits,and past a certain depth,darker baits.

Even if the conditions are bluebird skies,the light only goes down so far.Thoughts?

[NCbassmaster4Life]

In stained water and murkey water, the water depth that light would not penetrate much is prob around the 15-20ft range. In absolutly clear water I wouldn't know prob around the 500ft range.

[J Francho]

It depends on the turbidity of the water. Scientists and field researchers use a secchi disk to measure visibility. I figure light penetration is roughly the same thing.

[tomustang]

Since darkness is the absence of light, a brighter lure would be darker anyway.

[WRB]

The Secchi disk; a half black and half white plate lowered down until it does out of sight should give you the general depth of light depth as noted above. A biright colored spinnerbait lowered striaght down until it goes out of your sight will give you a good idea how deep the depth of light is under the conditions at that time.

Bass see colors a lot differently than the human eye does, so while you may be able to determine depth of light by our sight, it may mean very little to how a bass reacts to lure color at variuos depths.

The Color C Lector was a popular tool to determine prefered colors at variuos depths and water clarity. The problem is bass can't read and don't always do what we think they should be doing.

Tom

[scrutch]

When looking at the disk, you should be looking through something glass placed into the water to eliminate any surface light interference. A scuba mask perhaps?