Lure colour in tannin-stained water: what the fish receives
CDOM-heavy bog or river. Tannins eat blue hard; window sits in yellow-orange. At 3 m, viewed from 1.5 m at noon, the model scores Chartreuse highest for a largemouth bass (88/100) and Blue lowest (15/100).
What the model says about tannin-stained water
- Highest detection contrast at 3 m: Chartreuse (88).
- Lowest: Blue (15).
- Blue gets easier to see with depth: 12 at 0.5 m to 36 at 10 m.
- Species disagree on: Red craw. The eyes differ, see the species table below.
As the bass receives it
Each tile pairs the lure as the model hands it to a largemouth (left, after the water and the bass's cone set) with the water behind it at that depth (right). The small swatch beside each colour name is the lure's nominal sRGB, for reference; it is not a paint measurement. A bass has two cone types, so its swatch is a false-colour rendering of which colours it can still tell apart (the same convention as the Fish Vision Camera), not a literal view.
Firetiger
Chartreuse
Shad
Red craw
Blue
Black
Gold
Junebug
Background water goes from #727777 at 0.5 m to #757676 at 10 m. Tiles show the 0.5 m and 6 m views; the table below has all four depths.
Detection contrast by depth (largemouth bass)
0 to 100, from the same contrastScore() the Fish Vision Camera reports. The score is capped at 100, so several colours tie at the top. Chroma and luminance are the two channels it is built from.
Scroll the table sideways to compare every depth →
| Colour | 0.5 m | 3 m | 6 m | 10 m | Chroma / luminance at 3 m |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firetiger | 68 | 71 | 73 | 75 | 64 / 57 |
| Chartreuse | 86 | 88 | 90 | 91 | 81 / 64 |
| Shad | 62 | 62 | 61 | 61 | 56 / 52 |
| Red craw | 55 | 54 | 51 | 43 | 52 / 13 |
| Blue | 12 | 15 | 27 | 36 | 13 / 13 |
| Black | 33 | 35 | 36 | 36 | 18 / 33 |
| Gold | 61 | 62 | 64 | 62 | 57 / 45 |
| Junebug | 27 | 30 | 32 | 34 | 17 / 28 |
Same water, different eyes (3 m)
The model gives each species its own cone set. Dichromats (bass, walleye, pike) lose the short-wavelength axis; trout and bluegill keep three cones.
Scroll the table sideways to compare every species →
| Colour | Largemouth bass | Walleye | Northern pike | Rainbow trout | Bluegill |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firetiger | 71 | 72 | 71 | 68 | 63 |
| Chartreuse | 88 | 89 | 89 | 84 | 75 |
| Shad | 62 | 63 | 63 | 59 | 59 |
| Red craw | 54 | 52 | 56 | 35 | 58 |
| Blue | 15 | 15 | 14 | 17 | 17 |
| Black | 35 | 35 | 34 | 35 | 34 |
| Gold | 62 | 62 | 63 | 54 | 63 |
| Junebug | 30 | 32 | 31 | 35 | 29 |
What this does not tell you
This is how visible a solid-colour lure is against the water behind it, not how likely a fish is to eat it. It does not model prey matching, patterns, flash, UV, vibration or mood. Scores saturate at 100, so a tie at the top is not a tie in appetite. Inputs are fixed at 1.5 m viewing distance, noon light and a flat water column; change any of them in theFish Vision Camera. Spectra are rebuilt from sRGB, which is lossy; the limits are listed under how it works.
To see how a visible colour does against a feeding decision, run it through The Fish or browse the scenarios.