Lure colour, water clarity and depth

Selective absorption by wavelength is a physical property of water and is not in dispute. The sequence — red first, then orange and yellow, with blue and green persisting longest — holds in clear water, and the depth scale over which it happens depends on the water's clarity.

Inland and coastal water frequently departs from the clear-water case. Tannin-stained water transmits red and yellow relatively better and blue relatively worse; sediment-laden water scatters strongly and reduces the distance at which anything is visible regardless of colour.

Ambient light adds a further dimension: the same depth at midday and at dusk is a different light environment, and low light compresses the depth at which colour survives.

Fish eyes are adapted to the light environment they live in, with visual pigments tending to match the wavelengths available. That is why a species from stained inland water and one from clear ocean water do not have the same visual apparatus, and why generalising a colour rule across both is a category error.

The conventions are consistent enough to state, and they are conventions.

In clear water and bright light, natural and translucent finishes intended to resemble prey are the common choice, with flash used to add visibility at range.

In coloured water, high-contrast and high-visibility finishes are preferred, on the reasoning that a lure that cannot be seen cannot be taken, and dark silhouettes are widely used against bright skies for the same reason from the opposite direction.

At depth and at night, dark and solid colours are common, and the stated reasoning is silhouette rather than hue.

Certain colours have strong regional followings — chartreuse in North American fresh water, particular pink and orange shades in Pacific salmon fisheries, black and gold in European predator fishing — and those followings are cultural and historical as much as anything. That is not a criticism. A colour that anglers fish with confidence gets fished carefully and for longer, and that is a real effect on catch rates operating through the angler rather than the fish.

Whether any colour produces more takes than another, under stated conditions, for a stated species, is not something FishingHQ can answer from the sources available to it.

The reason is not that nobody has looked. It is that the question is difficult to isolate: colour cannot be varied in the field without also varying the day, the water, the angler's confidence and the amount of time the lure spends fishing, and the last of those is a large uncontrolled effect.

Ultraviolet is a further open question. Several species have ultraviolet sensitivity, and some lure finishes fluoresce or reflect in ways human eyes do not register, so two lures that look identical in the hand may not look identical to a fish. What that means for lure selection is unresolved.

FishingHQ's position is to give readers the optics, describe the conventions honestly, and decline to publish a colour chart. A chart would be the most shareable thing on this page and the least defensible.