Choosing a lure for the water you are looking at

MOST ANGLERS CHOOSE A LURE BY CONFIDENCE AND THEN EXPLAIN IT AFTERWARDS. The reasoning below produces a defensible starting point in front of unfamiliar water, which is the situation where confidence is worth least.

FIRST: HOW DEEP IS THE WATER, AND WHERE IN IT ARE THE FISH LIKELY TO BE? This is the dominant question and it is answered before any other. A lure in the wrong depth band catches nothing regardless of every other property. If the answer is unknown, the efficient approach is to fish something that covers a range — a lure that can be worked at several depths, or a countdown that lets you fish successively deeper — rather than to guess once.

SECOND: IS THE WATER MOVING? Flow changes what a lure does. A lure worked across current works harder and runs shallower; a lure worked with the current has almost no action unless it is retrieved faster than the water. In strong flow the lure has to be heavier or the presentation has to be adapted, and this frequently overrides preference.

THIRD: HOW CLEAR IS IT, AND WHAT DOES THAT DO TO DETECTION? In clear water a fish can see a lure a long way and can also see everything wrong with it, which favours smaller, more natural and faster presentations that give less time for inspection. In coloured water sight range collapses to very little, and the lure has to be found by displacement and vibration rather than seen — which favours larger profiles, stronger actions and slower retrieves that keep the lure in the fish's small detection zone for longer. This is a mechanism rather than a preference and it is the single most transferable rule in lure fishing.

FOURTH: WHAT IS THE FISH ACTUALLY EATING HERE? Which sets the size and the silhouette, and is a separate record because it connects to the diet graph.

FIFTH, AND LAST: COLOUR. It is last deliberately. The evidence for a colour ranking is weak, the evidence for depth, size, action and speed is strong, and an angler who has got the first four right and the fifth wrong will catch fish.

AND THE CONSTRAINT THAT OVERRIDES ALL OF IT: what the ground will let you fish. A perfect lure that snags on every cast is not a lure that is fishing. Weed, rock and snags decide what is possible before anything else decides what is optimal, and the honest first question in unfamiliar water is frequently 'what can I retrieve through this'.