Dirty Water Color

[ethan97]

Hey guys what are yall's favroit colors for muddy water? Iv got some crankbaits that I want to paint for a buddy and he wants them for dirty water. Any tips appercaited

[DawnBreaker]

My personal preferences for stained or dirty water: Some type of green, brown, or blue back and chartreuse belly. Brown back /orange belly craw pattern. Darker natural forage like bream or yellow perch if present. And oddly enough an all pearl bait with some red behind the gills and a dark red almost black "kill" dot.  If the water is tannic like the Altamaha river I'll lean a little more on the chartreuse or  orange.

[Ggeorge]

My dirty water experience with lures is rare but when drifting egg imitations for trout you run into all sorts of filthy water deals. The colours that seem to hold up in muddy or tannin water are chartreuse, hot orange and red. My thinking here is that egg imitations don't make much in the way of noise in the water and typically artificial's don't offer much odour so it must but sight that gets dirty water trout to hit these baits.

 

Check into light spectrum colour function stuff, there are charts that explain what colours  remain visible at what depth and relate that to the amount of available light. Essentially it's the same issue in dirty or stained water, light penetration is reduced so colour reflectivity changes despite not moving deeper. Once you understand how this works you have a foundation to select lures for water that lacks light penetration.

 

Oh and black obviously is a great addition to anything that you want to keep visible I didn't mention it at first because it's not a colour trout guys use much in egg patterns. Red and black are interchangeable at some point of low light they both appear the same.

 

Check out the stuff you'll find if you google "Color C Lector for fishing", lots of info there regarding peoples experiences as well as the facts.

 

A simple rule; dirty(water|) = dark(colour) and clear(water) = light(colour)

[Anglinarcher]

Wow, what a question for sure.  I tend to use a pretty normal means to determine what "Dirty" means.  For example, is the water clarity less then 2 feet (verry muddy), 2 to 5 feet (muddy), or 5 to 10 feet (stained).  All of these mean "dirty water", but each will give a different result on the "Color C Lector", and for sure the fish will see it different.

 

Additonally, the Color C Lector does not discuss water color (I assume it takes that into account in the probe), but is the water Black/blue, or is it green/yellow, or is it red/brown?  Water color is also a factor in determining what "dirty" means.

 

I am going to assume that in NC you see more tanic stained (Red/Brown) waters, with 2 to 5 feet clarity, so I would suggest that the best BASE COLORS would be in this order, Purple, Blue, Brown, Orange, followed by Red, then Black.

 

If you changed that to a Green/Yellow water color, then the order is changed and Green becomes one of the best.

 

But, finally, as suggested above, flourscent colors hold up well in all "dirty" color, so while the base should use the colors I offered, a liberal amount of flourscent highlights are in order.

[ROWINGADUBAY]

Purple and red for tea or stained colored water and the bright ones for when the water is just muddy just what works for me.

[Seeking 56]

Fluorescent pink.

[fishmanmark]

I fish a lot of feeder creeks to the main lake in the spring for saugeye.With the rain the visibility is usually one to two feet.I like a chrome and  some sort of fluorescent color mostly a yellow our pink seems to work for me.

[ethan97]

Thanks guys these are some really great suggesttions! and to help clarify its 0 to maybe 2ft or very muddy

[crzyjunyer]

thats what we call normal conditions here on the coosa rivers (weiss, neely henry, logan martin). I use alot of red and orange with dark green or blue backs as well as white bodies with purple backs work well. my go to store bought lure is usually a normans middle N in the spring crawdad pattern. It has a crawdad color body (orange base with black cradad features) and a green flake back on it. I have painted similar lures with a dark grey scale pattern on the sides and then trans orange over it with a pearl green back and its been a good one as well. 

 

To me though there is no true "magic lure color" in any water conditions, even though some willl do better than others at times. It really comes down more to having confidence in the lure and using it with the confidence. Then you tend to throw it more, in more places, and increase your strikes that way.

[spoonpluggergino]

I am a muskie hunter, but 17 years ago I joined Buck Perry spoonpluggers in order to improve my fishing knowledge, I can tell you it made a huge difference. Buck's Quote "Knoledge is The Key to Success"

 

As a spoonplugger I can tell you that in the spoonplugging world COLOR does not matter. Spoonplugger we are allways looking for the darkest water that we can find. If I had two lakes one lake with a 3 feet clear water and the second lake with 1 foot of clear water we would choose the 1 foot clear water lake, even if it was farther to drive to. Color to us would be just an aid, but for all practical reason it would not matter. spoonplugs are trolled or cast and they are allways bouncing off the bottom, fish will find or strike a plug through vibration caused by the plug or vibration caused when a plug hits hard bottom or rocks. Reason for darker water (NOT DURTY WATER) is light penetration is less and fish will most likely migrate to shallower water versus clear water, which they will be much deeper and harder to find. Buck Perry summed up all success in fishing with DEPTH and SPEED all other things just as an aid to a fisherman.

Some spoonplugging sites if interested more in fishing knowledge

www.spoonplugger.net and Buck's site www.buckperry.com

 

Gino