Riddle Me This Batman

[WRB]

You can discount regional color favorites or buy into it and catch more bass. 
Is there a better soft plastic in Florida than Junebug? A better color nearly everywhere else then green pumpkin? You will never know without trying. 
Jig color Black & Blue works nearly everywhere including Florida because nearly everyone has it tied on.

Color matter when it matters and it matters where I fish!

Tom

 

[Bird]

Someone on this forum said this and it makes sense and also made me laugh.

" Color doesn't matter until it does " 😂

 

I can tell you without doubt that color matters in the gin clear lakes I fish...... green pumpkin candy.

Stained water ? 

Grape, plum apple and ........ " June bug " .

[MIbassyaker]

I use junebug pretty often, but not for the usual reason cited: the purple/grape base color.  I use it because it is one of the most easily available sources of green flakes, which are money here, for some reason.

[thinkingredneck]

I fish in stained to muddy water and there is a noticeable difference with Junebug.  I will change to other colors.  If they don't work, I start catching them again on Junebug.  I do have one lake where falcon lake craw and candy bug work almost as well.

[Catt]

Cinnamon Pepper Neon Junebug Laminate

[GRiver]

1 hour ago, Catt said:

Cinnamon Pepper Neon Junebug Laminate

Gotta pic of that color…..WOW.

[Pat Brown]

2 hours ago, Catt said:

Cinnamon Pepper Neon Junebug Laminate

 

 

It's my most productive color in the big bite baits trick stick!!!

 

Also a fan of the 6th sense version of this color.

[thediscochef]

Bait monkey says lures catch fisherman before they catch a fish 

[Catt]

@Pat Brown most people don't know what that color is.

[txchaser]

Bass don't have blue cones, so if you subtract blue from purple, it's red. Which is one of the colors bass see best (along with green). 

 

Put on your blue light blocker glasses and look at your tackle. Everything looks really different. 

[NorthernBasser]

Like others have said, it's a confidence thing. If you have confidence in a bait/color, you're going to work it more effectively instead of just going through the motions.

 

The whole color thing is just weird. Chartreuse crankbaits are super popular, but how many chartreuse swim jigs have you ever seen? Black/blue swim jigs are quite popular, yet you rarely see black/blue crankbaits or spinnerbaits. 

[islandbass]

In my experience, June bug is not that productive but I wish it was because I like how it looks. Of all the bass I have ever caught, I don’t think I caught more than 3 bass with it. Western Washington is the location. 
 

Color doesn’t matter until it does is so true, 😂

[Susky River Rat]

every time I see this thread pop up I think it says bantam. I think it’s subliminal messages from the bait monkey. 

[Catt]

22 hours ago, GRiver said:

Gotta pic of that color…..WOW.

 

The color on the bag of plastics will say, Camo or Camouflage.

[BucksBasser]

I'm convinced color does matter for slow moving baits.

Especially plastics.

My brother, son, and I would often fish the same plastics but different colors.

Usually Senkos.

We would start with one guy fishing watermellon, one guy fishing shad, and one pink.

When someone started catching at a higher rate than the others we would all switch to that color and soon we all started catching bass.

This happened often enough to convince me and if one color isn't working I'll change.

 

[Tennessee Boy]

Let's say you go fishing and you fish two different colors of the same lure equally and you catch 10 fish total. (Note: I realize that no one in the history of fishing has ever fished two colors equally to get a fair comparison of their effectiveness)

 

How many of the 10 fish would you have to catch on color A to consider it the preferred color of the fish for that day?

[Choporoz]

Maybe...10-0

 

So hard for me to dismiss all the other variables in any fishing experiment 

[river-rat]

On 6/25/2024 at 5:37 AM, Catt said:

Cinnamon Pepper Neon Junebug Laminate

 

Bass Assassin makes a 7 1/2" worm in a color called Camo which I can vouch for.

 

 

[CDMTJager]

50 years of fishing experience has pushed me to this conclusion about color importance in bass fishing.

This is MY experience fishing specifically for largemouth bass in medium to small lakes in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Rivers in Indiana, Illinois for smallmouth

Color matters more often than not

Sometimes color matters everything

Sometimes color matters not al all.

Same colors for largemouth rarely have worked for me for smallmouth.

 

But day in and day out color selection of my luers matters especially with my soft plastics.

As the almighty good lord as my witness I wish there was a better more precise answer about the importance of color but in my 5 decades of fishing that's what the bass not bass fisherman have taught me is the truth of the situation as it applies to color selection for bass lures, ESPECIALLY soft plastics.

It is the job of you the fisherman to determine which of the three applies to your given fishing situation.

 

But I will say the vast overwhelming majority of the time colors that closely match natural forage fish the bass eat in that lake have worked best for me UNLESS they are on fire then a very bright color like Sight Fish/White Ice out catches all other colors.

 

Color matters even more in my experience when creek fishing locally for steelhead and salmon VS color selection for bass. I can not tell you how many times I have picked apart every inch of a area of stream I would bet my house has a steelhead in it of a King or coho with a nickel bladed #3 Mepps that works 90% of the time, then I throw a firetiger another killer good color then bright orange still nothing then a pink bladed #3 and first cast get a fish and 3 or for more. Come back tomorrow same stretch nothing atmospheric has changed creek level is the same and they wont tough anything but a copper color blade #3 Mepps. 

 

Best guess is 70% of my most productive hard crank baits best resemble a minnow color of some kind or a bluegill unless the bite is hot then I go to bright or bright/dark strong contrasting colors

For example I tried chatterbaits in white/chartreuse, greenpumpkin, watermelon, black/blue sparkle flake. Hands down absolutely no doubt whatsoever from March till post spawn black/blue sparkle flake with a red trailer out perfromed all other chatterbait colores by at least 3:1 in my lakes

But once spawn was over again in MY lakes throwing any chatter or spinnerbait in anything other than chartreuse and white is essentially a waist of a cast. I know because I have $100s of dollars tied up in a multitude of different colored chatter and spinner baits that see little if any use now.  

 

I'm sure bass fisherman in other parts of the country will tell me my favorite colors are duds in their lakes and I'm sure they are correct. After all these years I do all I can to let the bass pick my favorite bass colors. Yes I absolutely take into account water clarity and light conditions, but ultimately the best bass colors are up to the bass to pick. I am very fortunate in that the lakes I fish most often average about 2-3 foot water clarity.

I wish I or (anyone else for that matter) has a better answer or system about choosing lure colors but I just don't nore do I know of one.

 

 

[Tennessee Boy]

5 hours ago, CDMTJager said:

Yes I absolutely take into account water clarity and light conditions, but ultimately the best bass colors are up to the bass to pick.

I would love to hear your answer the question I posed earlier in this thread.  If you go fishing and catch a total of 10 fish on two different colors,  how many of the 10 do you have to catch on one color before you say it’s the color the bass prefer?

[Functional]

I'd like to think color doesn't matter but for me its made a bit of difference.

 

For example I have horrible luck with everyone's favorite, straight green pumpkin. Now watermelon with red flake I do excellent with. Likewise I don't do so well with blue/black but give me a purple that's a deep purple or grape (culprit grape is perfect) and I do excellent (black, no dice). Perfect example is I was shore fishing, pulled 3 fish in (last fish had 2 trying to rip the worm out of the mouth of the one I hooked) and they tore my last watermelon red and had to use a GP. Not a single fish after that. Could have been the bite suddenly shut off but its not the only occasion this has happened. 

 

Jigs I've had more success with browns and light tans than I have GP. Not that I kill em on jigs but I've yet to hook any fish on a GP jig.

 

On the other hand, those 2 colors seem to work great for me in both southern waters and northern waters. 

[SC53]

On 6/26/2024 at 1:31 PM, riverat said:

 

Bass Assassin makes a 7 1/2" worm in a color called Camo which I can vouch for.

 

 

I saw that color but they seem to only make it in the 7.5” ribbon tail.

Is there anyone else that makes it in a speed worm or flipping bait?

Craw?

[river-rat]

15 hours ago, SC53 said:

I saw that color but they seem to only make it in the 7.5” ribbon tail.

Is there anyone else that makes it in a speed worm or flipping bait?

Craw?

 

Not to my knowledge.

 

Gene Larew had made the 4" Salt Craw in Camouflage but discontinued it many years ago. It was one of my all time favorite colors in the Salt Craw. I bought every pack I could find at the time. Unfortunately, I ran out a couple of years ago.

 

You might try to find someone that custom pours plastics and see if they can make that color.

 

 

[Pat Brown]

I think that it's important to be observant of the forage in your lake and take your color cues from those things but forage - like bass - vary in color all the time.

 

My son panfishes and net fishes a LOT in the summertime - bass fishing can be kinda slow on super hot days - so I get to look at a LOT of minners (that's minn-ows for the northeners) and bream.

 

I'll tell y'all this much - bluegill aren't a color.  They're more like 8 colors.  Some are purple, some are green, some are white, some are blackish, some are blue, some are Chartreuse with bits of pink - pretty sure the bass like em all 😄 

 

The shiners and shad - aren't one color all the time.  Crappie - aren't one color all the time.  It just doesn't really work that way or so it seems?

 

Crayfish seem to come in all shapes and sizes and colors.  They change through out the year and adapt to their surroundings.

 

What I DO notice is the bass USUALLY go after a certain size class long before a specific color of forage.  OR maybe they're always pinning their meals to ONE spot over and over all afternoon.  Hmmmmmm....maybe that's important!?!?  🫢🫢🫢

 

All I'm trying to say is LOTS of other things come first when bass fishing - but don't let me stop you from experimenting!  It's harmless fun and can lead to confidence - which catches the most fish.

 

BUT I still care about color and I try to pick the color that seems to work the best!  We all do.  I believe when targeting the 1% of the bass that are the oldest and largest color is VERY important.

[GReb]

June bug works in Mississippi when the water is a normal stain which is about 1-2 feet of visibility. But I use a slightly more red color that usually out fishes it. It’s not popular and I’ve never seen it on the shelves locally which I hope continues. 
 

When the water muddies up I switch to a black grape type color. 
 

The lake I typically fish you can leave GP at home. Any purple/black variation will outfish if 5 to 1.   
 

I usually throw a dark jig with a bright trailer.