What colors show up best in stained water?
In tannin-stained or algae-tinted water, red and blue light are stripped out within a couple of meters, so exact hue matters far less than contrast against the background. High-visibility choices — chartreuse, orange, white, and the classic firetiger — survive as bright blotches longer than "natural" patterns do, and a solid black silhouette can out-fish everything in the dirtiest water because it reads as a hard-edged shape against downwelling light. Pick for visibility first; a pike deciding whether to fire from ambush is reacting to contrast, flash, and profile, not paint-job realism.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about Vision
Same topic, other species
- Why does fishing around lights at night work so well for crappie? — Crappie
- Can largemouth see my line? Should I worry about line visibility? — Largemouth Bass
- Does the figure-8 really work, and what is the mechanism? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- Do color and flash matter on ice jigs? — Yellow Perch
- Do smallmouth really inspect a bait before eating it? — Smallmouth Bass
- Does tippet or leader diameter really matter, or is that fly-shop mythology? — Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)
- Do walleye see color? Why do gold, orange, and chartreuse work so well? — Walleye