Color Preference?

[crypt]

a fish is like me standing in front of an open fridge..........I don't know what I want until I look hard enough. keep trying different colors, the fish will tell you what they want. 

[RRocket]

25 minutes ago, roadwarrior said:

Well, that's hard to believe. Green Pumpkin is a standard in the sport.

I agree. That's why I have the color in my box. I absolutely believe that green pumpkin is a color staple. By every metric it should produce.

 

But it just doesn't work here. Exact same bait (regardless of water color) in Junebug, blue/black, purple, sprayed grass, etc DO work.

 

The longer I fish, it just seems like there are some regional peculiarities that just defy logic.

[Spankey]

47 minutes ago, WRB said:

You can try to feed them what you like, sometimes they only eat what they like. How do you know? Keep an open mind and try other colors, the bass know what they want. 

Tom

Tom you are correct also. I’m sure there are a lot of us throwing things we like and sometime throw them for too long before switching up. I like switching up baits but admittedly I think I don’t do it quick enough. 

[Team9nine]

I go with a few basic colors that have proven themselves on my waters over time. Every once in a while I’ll throw something different, but not often. I focus much more on presentation, because basically it’s cheap and quick, and IMO, more important most days. Am I missing out on some secret color that will crush them on my waters? I don’t know 
 

It takes a lot of time, space and money to purchase, carry and then rotate through colors on the assumption that that is the key to more bites on any given day, when it could be any number of different things. It’s a game of probabilities, and fine-tuning color on a daily basis isn’t the way I prefer to play the game.

[Bankbeater]

I have pitched a black jig with a black trailer and not caught squat until I removed the black trailer and put on a blue one.

Sometimes they like the color, but the bait needs to be modified before the bass will hit it.  Most of the time, I have to change the profile. 

I just keep changing until I find what the bass are biting.

[papajoe222]

That Hackney video was an eye opener when it comes to color selection. The thing is, I’ve never seen when a significant color change was needed to get bites. If there were something different, water color, light penetration, etc. I can wrap my head around a color change, but in this instance none of those factors had changed from my previous outing two days earlier.  What did change was what color the fish didn’t want. I’m just glad I didn’t try to force feed them something green. 

[Catt]

Green Pumpkin is by far my least productive color. Okeechobee Craw, green pumpkin/blue is highly productive.

 

I do quite well with reds,, Red Shad, Redbug, Plum Apple, Crabapple 

[bowhunter63]

Moving baits I like to start with a Shiner, Shad color. On the bottom green pumpkin or a craw color. 

[TriStateBassin106]

My home lake is tannic brown and right now they're chewing orange/green pumpkin and some junebug holdovers from the mid summer. In green tinted/dirty water it's all about purple/black/blacknblue right now with white and chartreuse doing well on reaction baits, white also works well in almost any water clarity. 

[Spankey]

I’m pretty much a creature of habit with many of my bait colors. On a very productive bait of mine I bought it in Goby. Base color is basically Green Pumpkin w/ larger gold and purple flecks. I’ve been setting on it and have been reluctant to use it. As of late the bite has been off and was time to work with this color. On the river smallies it has been less productive (but works), but is being taken by bluegill, sunfish, and rockbass. Some have been nice

size. Why does it seem the smallies are less attracted to the gold and purple fleck and the panfish are more attracted. If I were to fish this bait tomorrow my results could flip flop. I think the bait is well designed for most fresh water fish. It can be rigged many ways and you can’t fish it wrong. 

[galyonj]

If I was honest with myself, I'd be able to only carry three colors in any soft plastic:

- junebug

- green pumpkin

- white

 

And that's pretty much in order.

 

I've caught on other colors, and I keep that stuff around just in case, but it stays at the bottom of the bag.

[gim]

When it comes to plastics, I generally abide by this:

 

Clear water = natural colors (darker shades)

Stained water = bright colors

 

I fish both types of water here.  A couple lakes are ultra clear, and one in particular is like pea soup.  I can't get a bite on that lake unless I am using a neon green or other bright color.

[galyonj]

@gimruis little pops of chartreuse play huge for me here. Love a chartreuse jighead.

 

I always keep that thang on me.

 

[the reel ess]

On 8/22/2023 at 10:51 PM, papajoe222 said:

Simple question for those in the know; How do you determine when the fish want one color over others?  Personally, I'm one that doesn't put much faith in color making a difference, but a recent experience when I couldn't buy a bite with a green pumplin soft plastic, they were downright hammering a different style plastic in purple/red flake. I thought the shape was the difference, but the same bait in GP was ignored. Is there a better way to determine when one color is hot?

In turbid waters they tend to like darker soft plastics. In clear water I'd go with the pumpkins and watermelons. It's mostly off color all year here so some combination of black/blue is the go-to. I stopped buying those other colors. Color seems to matter more than bait selection sometimes. Plastic is plastic.

[gim]

This is what I've used most of the season for plastic colors (not necessarily just stick baits, but the colors).  The three on the left in clearer-water lakes and the three on the right in murky-water lakes.  I am pretty good skipping them under docks.  Two of my three biggest largemouth have come on these colors of plastics this season.

[roadwarrior]

 

 

                                    

[volzfan59]

I'm pretty basic. For soft plastics, I carry green pumpkin, June bug and black in just about everything. Green pumpkin is my most productive color. I also have chartreuse, orange and blue eyes in the boat. The only exception is for flukes and grubs, where I also carry white and clear w/ colored flakes.

[Cgolf]

For clear water it comes down to how much light is getting into the water. Overcast or choppy water red or darker colors generally rule. Sunny or partly sunny and calmer water smoke based colors seem to work a lot better. This has held pretty true over the years for me.

 

One interesting thing to do is look at a gill out of the water on a sunny day vs an overcast day. Seems more silver in the sun and more green in the shade. That is my theory, which likely has a billion holes in it.

[Skunkmaster-k]

Brown jig , purple worm. These are the best in my life. And for the bass fishing life ,  I’m Steve Rogers. 

[scaleface]

Green Pumpkin was not my most productive color but I know it is one of the best colors because of how popular it is . I ran out of june bug and bama bug and the stores are out locally . I have been throwing green pumkin a lot lately and its been producing well . I still like to run a chartreuse marker down its back. I do that to almost 100 percent of worms now days . I like the two tone effect and I think the garlic might help a little too.

[MIbassyaker]

My rules of thumb are mostly in line with @gimruis -- clear = natural, murky = bright.

 

In water that is somehwere between the two, but stained, I like some constrasting highlights -- a little chartreuse in algae-stained water, and a little orange in brown-stained water. 

 

I also think flake colors are underappreciated, and may sometimes be a greater reason for a color preference than the base color. I think they may add some trigger potential on occasion, especially in cover where light penetrates inconsistently in a dappled manner.....a dark body slinking through the murk, suddenly flashes as the flakes catch a ray of sunlight.... I use junebug pretty often when pitching into vegetation, even in pretty clear water; not because of the grape base, but because of the green flakes.  

 

[Pat Brown]

My son has been bringing his ultra light pan fishing rig on the boat because of how slow the bass fishing gets this time of year.

 

He drops gulp minnows on tiny hooks exposed in front of 1/16 oz sinkers on 4 lb test line.  Basically micro t rig fluke ????

 

It is amazing the stuff he catches.  He's able to identify the forage in an area in a matter of minutes usually.

 

What has been very interesting to me is that in certain areas you only catch certain types of forage but everywhere you catch bass.

 

This started to make me wonder if at least making some small effort to match your overall color flavor to the most prominent species in any given area is worth exploring more than I give it credit for.

 

Jake caught some yellow perch with bright red tails and dorsal and pectoral fins....I got my red spike it marker out and hit my jig tails.

 

Caught a fish on that point a couple minutes later.

 

Don't know if the little adjustment helped or not, but it would make sense on fisheries where fish are getting hammered and eating one thing a lot in an area.

[Bazoo]

This is a very interesting discussion, thank you all for contributing. I pretty much use green pumpkinish colored to start and if it don't produce, I may or may not change colors. I most often change lure types, presentation, or location.

[Bankc]

All I can say is that color doesn't matter, until it does.  And the best way to know what color is working is to try it and find out.  

Typically, I go with natural colors for clear water and more extreme colors for stained water.  But that's just the starting point.  Sometimes the fish behave in the opposite of what you'd think.  

[TOXIC]

But why do smallmouth crush this color in the spring???