There are six feet of stained water. Looking down from dock, it’s almost as if you’re standing at bottom of a lake of tea. Your tackle box is loaded with lures, yet your confidence is paper-thin. You’ve read somewhere that a bright chartreuse jig catches walleyes in dirty water; so you pick one up. Or perhaps you pull out the subtle natural perch pattern; after all, they look real, don’t they?
Visibility and realism are two very different things, neither has anything to do with what you think looks good. A walleye doesn’t give a damn about aesthetics. He care about vibration and contrast. Selecting the correct color of a lure has far less to do with art then it does with physics; specifically how light behaves in water and how a fish’s eye sees that narrow band. It’s a little thing, but it could of been the difference between an empty cooler and a full cooler.
How to Pick the Right Lure Color for Walleye Fishing
The biggest variable you’ll encounter is water clarity. Walleye eyesight is great, especially in clear water. They picks up on very slight differences at long distances. This allows them to see what the lures look like, and the lure has to match environment. Colors that shine in clear water are natural colors such as blue shad, white pearl and silver. These color mirror the local forage but don’t seem too “artificial”. See how the chart lays this out?
As the water becomes less clear, the lure should became more subtle. Rain brings some stain to the water and snow melt washes a lot of dirt into lakes during spring, muddying them up. Reds and oranges vanish quickly in dirty water. That’s when you use fire tiger, gold, and chartreuse patterns. These colors is high-visibility. They give off light differently, cutting through the murk.
For anglers, it’s largely a matter of psychology. We just want to throw a lure that we think might be a meal. Fact is, the fish realy want something they can find in the dark and gloomy water. It gets more complicated when we consider depth. Water absorbs colors at a certain rate. Blue and violet reach the deepest parts; red vanishes first.
So if you’re targeting fish out on a summer structure at 50 feet, there’s no use throwing a red crawdad pattern around. The walleye will see it as some combination of gray and black. What you want to do is throw colors that make it through deeper levels of the water column. Dark blue and purple still hold up well way below what’s happened to orange which is gone altogether. This is why you hear about how natural looking colors perform best in shallow summertime waters, while crazy neon patterns takes over in deep water and during the twilight hours. You are not just choosing a color, but also accounting for how environment breaks down the spectrum.
Temperature is a factor of seasonal change, and it drives aggression and metabolism. Visual activity peaks during their spring spawn on shallow flats. Warmer shades like pink and orange excel as they closely match those of baitfish in cooler water. Then summer comes around; fish slide off the banks into a deeper, cooler layer of water. Feeding slows and they turn picky and less aggressive. Time to revert to more natural perch and silvers colors again. Fish are back near familiar home ranges and know what’s available localy.
Finally, slow and subtle is the name of the game come winter or ice-out. White or pink glowing colors is most effective here. They tend to stand out against the dull light filtering through the ice without spooking already hesitant, sluggish fish. The variables change with time of day and the phase of the moon as well.
The eyesight of walleyes is tuned to hunt in lowlight conditions so morning, evening and even nighttime hours will be your best bets. In daylight hours, particularly sunny days, especially in clear water, you want those flashy silvers that reflect like baitfish scales. But once the light dims or if it’s a full moon and lights up the waters surface, then contrast reigns supreme once more.
On dark moonlit nights, black lures produce a sharp silhouette against the backdrop off the sky. A glow-in-the-dark chartreuse looks just like that plankton bloom that draws the baitfish in. This is because predator fish don’t necessarily see detail but instead focus on movement and shadow.
So in conclusion, learning how to pick colors on walleyes is mostly a matter of reading the water before ever casting. Look at it, look at the depth, notice the water clarity. Match your lure’s visibility to what they can see so you can stop guessing and start fishing with purpose. It may be a full tackle box, but it shouldn’t be complicated. Choose the color that will hold up in environment and let physics handle the rest.