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Thread: What factors affect color choice?

  1. #1
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    Default What factors affect color choice?


    Hey guys, relative newbie here.

    I was wondering what factors influence color choice (and how so) from you more experienced anglers. (e.g. brighter or darker jigs/twistertails in clearer or murkier water, hotter or colder, early or late in day, early or late in season, whatever)

    Any reasonable advice would be appreciated.

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    Look at the bottom of this page in the related threads links. Some great reading there. I like dark color in dingy water and clean colors in clear water. That said a man once told me crappie are like little girls, they like loud colors and heavy contrast in colors. Pink head, dark blue body and chartreuse tail, sounds like something a little girl would pick dont it?

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    Light colors in clear and dark/chartruse in dingy water. Sometimes amount of sunlight or lack of it will favor darker colors.
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    Same as ^^^ and ^^^ and welcome to the forum.
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  5. #5
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    CrappiePappy is offline Super Moderator - 2013 Man Of The Year * Crappie.com Supporter
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    Wink IMHO ..... (& JUST my opinion)

    The only "reasonable" advice I can give you, is to not get too hung up on "color". It's not always the magic bullet. FINDING the fish is factor #1 .... then presentation (style & speed) ... then bait size & color.

    When it comes to the "color" portion of these factors ... what you're looking for is "contrast" (dark/light, dull/shiny, clear/opaque, etc). What contrast will do, is give the fish something to key on, regardless of the water clarity or background coloration.

    Now ... that being said, there are times when one color (or combination) seems to work better - at that time. There's no absolutes in Crappie fishing Rofl ... (which is why I discourage people from asking what's the "best" of anything related). Just as soon as you get comfy with throwing a "favorite" color & having success with it, you're just likely to find out (next trip) that they ain't liking that color anymore banghead
    But, don't give up on it ... they'll work their way back around to it, eventually

    I can remember a time when jigs only came in a few colors ... all solid, one color deals. White, yellow, & black was it ... and you know what --- they caught fish !! Why ?? Well, IMHO ... they did because we put them in front of the fish that we found !! If we hadn't found the fish, first ... no color on Earth would have worked.

    While Crappie are "sight feeders", and can see a good distance thru stained to murky waters ... they can also "feel" (sense) the vibrations put off by the bait pushing water, thru their lateral lines.

    ... cp

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    water color and clarity first and foremost, then the conditions of the sky(bright days, or dark over cast ect).
    Theres just as many conditions of water color and clarity as there are colors of baits.

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    gabowman is offline Super Moderator * Crappie.com Supporter
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    Crappiepappy is right on the money. I longline troll and pull 14 single jigs at once. The notions of dark colors for stained water and light colors for clear seem to sometimes be right the opposite. There's days in stained water on a dark cloudy day that the majority of the bites comes off an electric chicken colored curly tail jig and again on an sunny day in clear water that a blue/black/chart. curly tail jigs gets most of the action. You just never know and would need to do some switching out to pick the best colors for any given day, but first of all you gotta find the fish, and your electronics will help you do that.Thumbs Up

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    I pulled cranks this weekend and had six different colors on. With the exception of one (black) they all caught about the same number of fish. We took the black off and that pole started catching too. That show that this particular day they didn't want black. A few weeks ago we caught more on black than all the others... Like pappy said it changes so don't get Hung on any one color.

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  9. #9
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    For me it's pretty simple. First is the water clarity and if I can't see more than 2' down (my jig) I call that stained and if under 1' it's getting to the really stained to muddy. Once I can see 3' deep or more that is a real break through for color change for me. I start every spring on this lake with it being stained and if not too bad I will use my favorite color for that which is Chart/Blue/Chart most of the time, but also like Silver/FL Yellow/Blue. Once it clears I go to Silver/Blue/white or Silver/Silver/Blue.

    Then the other thing to consider that will make a difference some is if it's cloudy or sunny and that may even make a difference on my Roadrunners if I use a silver blade or gold (Gold for cloudy days). Oh and if muddy I would go with dark colors or extremely bright colors.

    Experiment with colors on these conditions and see what you find.

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