What to do when water color changes?

[cdubya]

I don't even know if it's normal for this to occur this quickly but here's what's happened. Last week when the temps were in the mid 90's and any time before that since I begain fishing this pond the water was always murky. Well, now that the temps have been in the lower 80's the water is crystal clear all the way around the pond. I just fished the pond two days ago and it was really muddy now it's like looking into a freshly treated swimming pool. I know the fish are now able to be spooked easier and that the lure color will need to be changed but should i wait before taking drastic measures to see if the color returns to murky and what should I fish with during the meantime? I through everything I had at them with no success with the exception to a white rooster tail that brought in a small 1lb'er LM. Thanks in advance.

Chris

[zooker]

turn over it happens.. figure bustin tail to find a bass for a couple weeks..

zooker

[brushhog]

Water that clear is tough to fish... If you can see them they can see you and then they get spooky.

[bassfisher02]

Take into consideration that the clear water is just as new to the bass as it is to you. Going from murky water to gin clear water will make the bass very skeptical and they will be tough to catch. My suggestion: slow down your presentation and use small jigs and other small lures. Use natural colors.

[BassAddict]

Light line and smaller baits. Use more browns and greens for colors. Also you will need to make longer casts.

[keithdog]

The best advice I would have would have to do with lure color selection. My favorite lake was very murky all year. And one of the best lures I used was a Rapala #7 jointed Shad Rap in a color which was a Cabelas exclusive this year. It was a bright fire orange red with some yellow and black. Very similar to the Hot Tiger pattern, but a little different. Anyways, that bright color crankbait scored big all year. Now that my lake is clearing up, my success with that bait has slowed tremendously. While I can still take one occationally with that bright color, the Rapala DTSS6 in the color Olive shiner is MUCH more productive. As the water cleared, the bass started to prefer a color with a more natural appearance to it. That color along with the perch color are now my to go colors for crankbait selection. The brighter colors durring clear water conditions seems to turn bass off as a rule of thumb. There are always the days where there is an exception to the rule. But I bet if you choose lures with a more natural color to them, your catch ratio with go up.

[Mac10]

Try some finesse worms in the grasshopper color. It's a laminated amber and chartreuse color, quite clear with a little pepper and green flake thrown in. Zoom makes a grasshopper finesse worm, but also buehlersales.com has the Luck E Strike razor worm......get the unscented 4 inch razor worm......in grasshopper. Whichever you use, rig it weightless on a light wire hook.....4 or 6 lb mono works well.

Cast it out, it will go a fair distance using the lighter line as suggested and simply let it slow fall to the bottom.....let sit a good 30 seconds, then lift slowly about two feet to feel for fish......twitch it once at the top of the lift...and let re-fall.....wait, watching line, for another 20 seconds and slowly lift once again.....if nothing on, reel and re-cast to another likely spot.

If the weeds are dying, they won't hold as many bass but are still worth trying now and again......if dead, try stumps, rocks, and other cover such as pads and reeds......

Before moving, we fished gin clear water 95 percent of the time and caught a slew of fish slow falling the worms. If the bite was off, which was rare, we'd occasionally switch to a black slider worm.......one or the other always worked well.

[1FASTLASER]

They got it. Go to NATURAL COLORS for the AVAILABLE bait in the water you are fishing. Shad have all different hues of colors and so does all the rest of natural bait. So what I do is closely match the color of the bait in the water I am fishing at the time. Thats one of the reasons I have so many crank baits that are say tennesse shad. All of them are slighly more grey or more white............you get the picture

[BigBassin144]

Hey one of our more ffective lures in clear and cloudy water (not real cloudy or muddy though) is a Bandit Crank in baby bluegill colored, it has a little flash to it, and looks like a little bluegill. (well it did whe it had all the paint on it.) We prefer to use the 100 series shallow diving ones, but you can use whatever depth you want.

bb144

[cdubya]

This will probably earn me a few lashings but I've never used cranks, well atleast lipped cranks that is. I have one lipped crank that transitions from black back to light brown to white belly. It's also not the normal crank instead of it being the usual round teardrop the sides are slightly flattened. I believe it's one of bombers fatfree lures or maybe a flat a series it wasn't on the label on the box. Quite honestly I don't think I'm jigging it correctly. The only thing I've had consistant success with thus far has been a Rebel Pop-R P65 Green Perch and Firetiger as well as a Heddon Tiny Torpedo Shad. I have caught w/ a c-rigged zoom green pumpkin salt injected 4" worm however that was in murky water. They've just been really shy about even following the bait where as they use to follow just about anything I threw at 'em.

I did scale down to a white rooster tail and atleast got one bass out of that trip at the end of the day. I have another larger scale tail in firetiger colors but I can't get the blade to spin at all and have had that issue straight out of box so not sure on the issue with it. I did return to the pond yesterday to check color of water and it seems to be returning to murky however the grass had just been cut around the pond so that's probably why. I'll be going back Saturday to check it as long as the weather holds out. Again thanks for all the tips.

[bassfisher02]

I dont use crankbaits either. Should but really havent gotten around to it. I have a few in the tackle box that I will someday use, most likely when I get a boat and get out on the water.

[bassnman30]

Check to see if someone has put chemicals in the water. A pond that I fish turns clear into the summer. The owner puts a type chemical in the water to kill the moss. I know that the fish can see you as well as they are visible themselves. Fishing gets tough then.