A Insight On Color Fade With Depth.

[Siebert Outdoors]

Here is a couple pictures of jigs at different depths. You can see how the colors start to fade out. I took these without adding light to show the real life effects.

taken at 5-6ft

Jig is watermelon Purple

20 fow

Jig is watermelon Purple

Notice how the colors start to fade out. 35 fow

Jig is watermelon Purple and the second jig is a black and red jig.

[zachb34]

thats actually a really good demonstration imagine that in stained or dirty water.

[WRB]

Now all that is needed is to process the colors through the basses eye and interpret through their brain.

I have looked at a lot color studies starting back when Loran Hill came out with his Color C Lector. The problem was and still is my experience doesn't support the science using rods and cones to suggest how bass see color in the absence of light or very low light at night. The primary colors: red, yellow and blue make up our unaided eye spectrum. We can't see ultra violet or infra red without the aid of filters. Bass and other fish that live in water have evolved to be able see in the environment they must survive in.

30 feet depth of light is very clear water, good pictures. The black stands out against the light bottom very well.

I didn't intend to down ply your post, this should be a good topic, thank you for sharing.

Tom

[roadwarrior]

Well, my initial reaction is "colors make us feel good".

Perhaps color is important in clear shallow water, but it seems like black & blue

might be the ticket deep and in stained water. I hope Big O responds on this thread,

he has an artist's eye for color combinations.

[papajoe222]

A very knowledgeable fisherman (KVD) advocates matching your jig color to the color of the bottom. On the other hand, the 'Bass Proffessor' Doug Hannon recommends contrasting the bottom as bass, expecially in clear water, are sight feeders and can detect your offering at greater distances if it contrasts it's surroundings.

Both are giving very sound advice from a view of where to start from. Color can sometimes make all the difference in the world when it comes to catching. I don't buy into subtle color differences, but I do agree with what I just said.

I carry two jig colors. Black and blue and green pumpkin or green seed. My trailers is where I will add color often times with dye, but only if the combo isnt' or has stopped producing and I know there are fish present.

On numerous occasions I have seen anglers switching out baits and colors when their efforts would have been better directed at locating the fish first.

[Siebert Outdoors]

Now all that is needed is to process the colors through the basses eye and interpret through their brain.

The problem was and still is my experience doesn't support the science using rods and cones to suggest how bass see color in the absence of light or very low light at night. The primary colors: red, yellow and blue make up our unaided eye spectrum. We can't see ultra violet or infra red without the aid of filters. Bass and other fish that live in water have evolved to be able see in the environment they must survive

I'll never argue with that.

Main reason I posted it was to see it as we see it. Which is different then fish. I was taking underwater pictures of my jigs for something to do and see how skirts react under water. Then I thought "Heck why not share some pics with my BR friends." Its cool and most people never see what their lures look like at 30 fow.

[SPEEDBEAD.]

Here's my take (I know you'll appreciate this one LOL)....

Just use all black. Should look the same at the surface as it does at the bottom.

[00 mod]

There is no wrong color jig as long as it is black and blue!(or some variance of it )

Jeff

[LgMouthGambler]

That was a cool post!

[WRB]

The lure that I have the most time on the water with is a jig, because it's the 1 lure that always gets fished, night or day, year around. When I started to fish jigs was back in the late 50's, that is over 50 years of jig fishing! The only 2 colors available back then we're black or white buck tail jigs. The trailers were black or white pork rind. The early 60's vinyl jig skirts became available in black, white and yellow, followed a few years later with brown, purple, blue and combinations of those colors. Pedigo pork rind came out with trailers called lizards in 3" and 4" ; L3 and L4, in black, purple, brown, blue and white. We now had a wide variety of jig colors to choose from. Black remained the dominate choice everywhere, except out west where the PVJ (purple vinyl jig) was the go to money jig in deep structured reservoirs.

Today black and blue is the dominate color combintion across the country, except out west where purple and brown combination if preferred.

The only time I fish a black or black and blue jig is at night. Black works at rare times during the day in clear deep rocky structured reservoirs out west. It worked OK during the years when it was the only color available, I caught bass on both all black and all white jigs back in the 50's and 60's. I changed to purple and browns during the late 60's and started catching more and bigger bass.

The color combination green weenie started out west and is the basis for green pumpkin, both good colors out west, but not a popular jig color for LMB, more popular for smallmouth and spotted bass.

The bottom line; black with blue and green pumpkin are rarely fished jig colors out west, except in the Delta area.

Color preferences are regional. When I was traveling around the country and fishing, I cuaght a lot of bass on brown and purple jigs, the reason may have been very few bass had ever seen the jig color before and sometimes different is better.

Tom

PS; I haven't ever seen a live crawdad that was black or black and blue, or purple, other than in pictures. Out wet the Crawdads tend to be reddish brown or dark red and brown/green when they molt.

[Siebert Outdoors]

PS; I haven't ever seen a live crawdad that was black or black and blue, or purple, other than in pictures. Out wet the Crawdads tend to be reddish brown or dark red and brown/green when they molt.

This is one thing I look for when I dive. I've seen some different shades of craws. Some of my jig skirts I actually formulated after craws I have found at Tablerock or Bull Shoals. I have seen Deep browns almost black to blueish and purplish bellies surrounded by light brown tops or greenish tops, alot of the normal brown craws. Next time I dive I'll try and get some pictures of craws and post them. This is one of the skirts.

[WRB]

Years ago I would catch Crawdads from the local lakes and keep them in glass jars filled with water to study the colors. We see an overall color at first glance, however when you look closely the shells are mde up of several colors that bllend onto a basic color. What looks like brown may be a light cinnamon background with dots of red, purple, black, green, blue. The under belly is almost always light tan. Crawdads change color depending on the water chemistry, aquatic vexation and structure background.

Back in the late 60's when I fished with live Crawdads, I would add food color to the water tank they were kept in; blue dye had the bigger color change and attracted more strikes. Blue Crawdads more thn likely stood out and were easy prey. Red, yellow and green dyed live Crawdads didn't seem to improve strikes.

I used a lot of blue vinyl skirt jigs for awhile and they worked occasionally, blue was a popular soft plastic color in the 70's; blueberry Jelly worms! Today we use blue or blue neon as a high light color. Night crawlers tend to have a blue neon shine; cinnamon with blue neon and oxblood with purple are both good plastic worm colors.

Tom

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[Paul Roberts]

I'll leave you to ponder ...

The Mystery of the Blue Lobster...

A number of years back I was at a research lab on the Atlantic coast. One of the projects they had going was to check out the feasibility of raising lobsters from eggs for market. In their tanks they had some bright blue lobsters. I inquired about them because I'd also seen a few blue crayfish. They said it was an interesting story...

Blue lobsters are something like one in a million in the wild. But in the lab they were finding a much higher percentage of blues (don’t remember the numbers). Turns out they are a fairly common color but the researchers theorize that the blue ones most likely are selected out in the wild by predators (sculpins, sea robins, and striped bass mostly), thus nearly all wild lobsters are found in the usual earth tones. In the lab no such selective pressure exists, and blue ones are relatively common.

I can also tell an almost identical story about white-coated deer in central New York State. Similarly, one of the reasons many flocking bird species all look alike is that the odd one, say the starling with a white tail feather, or the lone mallard in with a flock of Gads, is more apt to be targeted by hawks and falcons. The take-home message is: When you are prey, it pays not to stand out. I believe this is at least one of the reasons that fluorescent lures can work so well at times.

Another part of the equation is how well bass can see color in the first place. Fish are generally myopic -that is, they focus relatively closely in large part due to the way light behaves in water. Further, light attenuates quickly in water (parsed out wavelength by wavelength as distance through water increases). Add cloud cover, surface chop, turbidity, and distance and light attenuates rapidly. Practically speaking, it's not terribly bright down there (although that is extremely variable with water and sky conditions). Fish in general do not rate very high in the visual acuity spectrum either, and brightness matters a lot, sort of like resolution / image quality through on a small diameter binocular or camera lens.

Bass in particular are shallow water predators and their vision is primarily adapted to shallow environments -with peak color resolution in the range of wavelengths that exist shallow, and weakest in the wavelengths that penetrate deepest.

[WRB]

Agree Pual.

Here is where actual fishing experience clouds the basses ability of seeing very well deep water for bass.

I rarely fish deeper than 40 feet for LMB due to several issues with severe pressure changes have on these fish. With that said, I was fishing with a friend several yers ago during the winter at lake Castaic. I had agreed to teach my jig fishing presentation and my friend wanted to sheer with me his deep water presentation using. Do nothing type custom hand poured soft plastic worm, a 4" straight worm the sme shape on both ends.

The worm color he ws catching his bass on was clear with a very faint blue neon blood line. The worm being a hand poured varied a little from worm to worm, some had slightly more blue neon than others. The presentation required 4# Maxima clear mono, 1/4 oz split shot, 3' above the hook, the hook ws a light wire ghost size 4 Phenix, the worm nose hooked.

My friend was fishing a long ledge that ran about 1/4 mile off shore in 60 feet of water and dropped off to very deep water over 140'. The bass were holding on of the ledge ner the break line. We started a controlled drift dragging the worms and the line would jut get tight, reel the line to old up th rod nd et th hook. If you used a worm ith darkr blood line, no strikes, the bss only winter the lighter more transparent worms. We Los tried everlasting other darker colors that work well in shallower water, no bites. Thee deep bass stayed on this very specific color for several weeks and would only bite that clear light blue neon 4" do nothing worm, very selective bite.

Several experiences fishing night tournaments with slight color changes making a difference; I tend to use dark colors when fishing both worms and jigs at night.

Black being the basic color with either blue or red highlights in flakes or blood lines. During a tournament where I was fishing out of my partners boat, I had picked up a bag of black grape with blue neon blood line instead of black with blue neon blood line, same make of 9" worm, and put the bag in my tackle bag with my other night fishing worms. Before dark I rigged up the black with blue neon 9" worm and we fished for hours without much luck, caught a few jig fish. I put on a new worm from the unopened bag, I had given the opened bag to my partner earlier because he was worm fishing more than I was. The worm bite turned on for me, but my partner couldn't get bit. So I gave him a worm out of the new bag and he started to catch bass. The difference, the new bag was the black grape with blue neon blood line, the bass wanted dark purple, not black. I had to look at the worm with flash light to discover why they wanted the worms form the new bag!

It's experience like this that really make you wonder about how bass see colors in very low light conditions.

Tom

[Paul Roberts]

Kevin Van Dam relates a story in one of his books (paraphrased):

Four top pros were sharing a large main lake point, and catching bass on worms. Each found a particular color that drew the most strikes. "The only one that worked", they each said when it was over. Interesting thing was, all four ended "divining" 4 entirely different colors!

[Highhawk1948]

some excellent discussion!