A Little Advice About Choosing Lure Colors

I was swapping emails with a buddy the other day when we got to talking about how to choose the color of lures to throw on any given day. After all, there's only like a bazillion of them to choose from any more, or haven't you checked catalogs or the Internet lately? For that matter, just walk into any tackle store.

All I had to offer my buddy was the advice someone had given me oh so many years ago: Use bright colors on bright days, dark colors on dark days. After we ended our email session, I got to thinking about how antiquated that philosophy probably is today and decided to check and see. Sure enough, as I quickly learned, the guidance about choosing lure colors has gotten every bit as sophisticated as everything else in this world. I don't believe there's anything simple left today, except maybe some simple-minded people (all of whom shall remain nameless).

For those of you who like to keep up with the times, here is what I found online about choosing lure colors in the modern era:

Use natural, light-colored lures for clear water/sunny days. Bass have very keen vision. In fact, their eyes are very similar to ours, and they are able to see most of the same colors we can. In clearer water and on bright, sunny days, a lure in a natural color resembling the forage they're feeding on will fool them into biting (or as I've discovered on a few outings, maybe that and a stick of dyn-o-mite). In soft plastic baits, that means natural greens, browns and shad colors; for hard baits, starting with a shad, bluegill, frog, or crawfish-patterned lure is a good choice, depending on the local menu.

Use very bright or very dark lures for dirty water/cloudy days. In dark or muddy water and on overcast days, tie on a brightly colored lure to increase visibility, or use a very dark solid color to maximize profile visibility. A black and blue soft plastic is ideal; a white and chartreuse Glow Blade spinnerbait also will produce. For hard baits, bright chartreuse, green, or dark, solid-colored lures will perform well.

Local baitfish and native forage patterns are go-to colors. A lure mimicking whatever baitfish populate your local waters is indispensable. Whether it's gizzard shad, threadfin shad, golden shiner, or fathead minnows, bass want to eat them, and you can lure them in with chrome, silver, or shad-colored lures of various designs. Spinnerbaits with multiple blades work well to imitate small groups of baitfish (that must be why I found a bag of those stashed in an old tackle box the other day).

Don't be afraid to try something completely different. So what about all those wacky-named colors, like green weenie, puke, margarita mutilator, and merthiolate? There is, in fact, a method to the madness. Experienced bass anglers know that presenting a completely new color to bass that aren't biting can somehow turn them back on, though it's far from settled science as to why. If you look in a pro's tackle box, you'll see, alongside the standard colors, a few colors not seen in nature, such as hot pinks, blues, red chrome, and multi-colored lures--almost anything imaginable. Sometimes, these unusual colors can be the key to success. A great example of this principle is the common lure color "firetiger." You'll rarely find a tackle box without at least one crankbait in this wild, unnatural color--a mix of neon green, chartreuse, hot orange, and black stripes. It certainly looks like nothing you'll find on a bass's menu. Yet, it's been a go-to color for decades, and it produces bass as well as any naturally-colored lure.

The key to becoming a successful bass angler is to experiment with a variety of colors until you find what works best on your local waters. Start with colors that have produced for you in the past, or with colors recommended by locals (a certain degree of trust may be involved here), and then branch out. You'll learn through trial and error, and you'll eventually discover the right pattern that unlocks the bite.