In the opinion of weekend warriors...
I think color makes more of a difference in deep water than shallow water. I proved this to myself more than 30 years ago while fishing a new reservoir. A half-mile offshore was a drop from 12 to 18 feet. A tremendous amount of water was being pumped into the new reservoir, and there was a slight current. The bass were stacked up at that drop, and my buddies and I routinely caught 30 or so apiece in a morning's fishing.
My preferred lure was a six-inch light blue Creme worm, with a pretty heavy sinker.
One day, a small piece of debris had washed up to the lip of that drop-off. If you could drag your worm through that little bit of debris, probably the size of a garbage-can lid, you almost were guaranteed a fish. After catching four bass on four casts in that debris on the blue worm, I switched to a purple color in the exact same worm, made four casts, and felt the debris every time but didn't get a single bite. Changed back to the blue worm, made four more casts, and caught a fish each time. To this day, I always fish deeper water with a blue-colored lure.
I know that a lot of guys don't consider 12 to 18 feet of water deep, but in my home waters, that's pretty deep.
As far as normal fishing with plastics goes, I usually start early morning with black. When that slows, I switch to purple. And when that slows, I go to junebug with a little bit of glitter or green pumpkin. For hard baits, I normally use gold with a black back, due to our dark tannic-stained water. If I'm in clear water, which doesn't happen often, I go with silver with a black back.
For what it's worth, that's my approach after about 50 years of this crazy nonsense we call fishing.
I'm from the school that puts a lure's color somewhere near the bottom of our priority list when it comes to what's important to catching fish. I do, however, admit there are times when those items near the bottom can make the difference between catching and being skunked. My reluctance to recognize those times, in my opinion, has kept me from becoming a better angler.
Today was a perfect example. My partner and I were both throwing RedEye Shads. His was gold/black back, and mine was chrome/blue back, both in 1/2-ounce. He boated four keepers and missed or lost four others to the one dink I boated over the first two hours. I switched to the same color as his and started getting bit on par with his numbers.
My difficulty in recognizing the importance of color is the fact I fish alone more often than not. I change baits or techniques before ever considering changing the color of a bait that isn't producing.
When I'm fishing lake largemouth, my color choices aren't many: green pumpkin and watermelon for clear to lightly stained water, black for dirty water, and sometimes brown (instead of watermelon) if I'm fishing rocks in high-visibility water. For the river smallmouth I pursue, color is really important. Just ask a gentleman from Florida whom I took out for three days of smallmouth fishing.
He caught a total of nine fish, while I boated 104. Yeah, I know it sounds like a story, but it's true. He refused to believe that the smallies in clear water were really keyed in on color, opting instead to just throw downsized baits. The color was smoke purple, and it didn't matter if it was a tube or a swimbait, those were the only two baits I used. My friend from Florida didn't have anything in that color and wouldn't take my baits. Instead, he insisted they eventually would eat a different color. The short story was they didn't.
Now that doesn't happen all the time, but it happens enough to place color a few rungs higher than the bottom, and that is another thing I've found. When it comes to smallmouth, color factors way more than with largemouth, at least in every body of water I've ever fished for them in. You may be able to catch them on several different colors, but you'll quickly notice that certain colors will get bit more often or by larger fish on average, and I've had a lot of days in which the bait had to have glitter.
Black wouldn't buy me a strike during a small club tournament, but black neon was getting hit so hard I had to change baits every two fish. For the most part, I'm with the general consensus on color, in that it's the least important element, with location and presentation being on top. In clear-water smallmouth fishing, however, color is much more important than some would like to believe.
In the opinion of bass pro Greg Hackney...
I believe that color is a huge part of the reason fishermen catch bass. If you are using a lure that imitates what the bass are feeding on at the time of year and on the body of water you're fishing, of course you'll get more bites than if you disregard the color of lure you're fishing. Another factor that makes lure color so important is if you're fishing a color in which you have a lot of confidence. Then you'll be more expectant of a strike and catch more bass than if you're fishing a lure color in which you have little or no confidence. If that color looks like something you believe will make a bass fight, then fish it thoroughly, slowly and aggressively enough to get bites on that color (in other words, wear it out!).
When I go to a lake I've never fished before, I'll look at the water color and say to myself, "According to this lake's water color, this color of lure should work," and I'll start fishing it. Once I catch a bass, if that fish spits up a shad, bluegill, crawfish, or some other bait when I put it in the livewell that's a different color than I'm using, I'll change colors to try and match that bait. If I can match the color exactly, then I believe I'll get even more bites. I'll say to myself, "I've got it figured out now. I know what the bass are eating, I know the color of the bait, and I have that exact match for the color of lure." So, for me, having the right color and the right type of lure that I know the bass are feeding on is a huge confidence builder.
Now having said that, I know you can cast any color of lure, get a bite, and catch a bass. But what I've learned is I'm not trying to get just one bite in a day of fishing. I want to get 50 bites. I believe if I can fish a lure the size and the color that the bass are feeding on, I'll have a much greater chance of getting those 50 bites than I will if I don't pay close attention to what the bass are eating.
If I only can have two colors of lures to fish all over the nation, under all weather and water conditions, I'll fish either a solid black, a black-and-blue, or a black-and-red lure. I want one of those lures to definitely have a black overtone. And the second lure needs to be a brown lure like green pumpkin, because those two basic colors are what most colors are based on, especially in soft-plastic lures. Then I'll add some other types of colors off those two basic colors, such as watermelon-red, green-pumpkin-sapphire, black-blue, or black-neon.
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