Which lure gets eaten? The model has already run it.
72 fixed scenarios: 6 species, three temperature bands, clear or muddy water, neutral or post-front. In each one, 11 lure archetypes are tried in all 8 colours and ranked by the fish decision model. Something gets eaten in 12 of them. The other 60 are worth reading for the refusals.
- Scenarios
- 72
- Species
- 6
- Colours
- 8 per lure
- Depth
- 2 m
- Light
- Noon
- Water
- clear / muddy
- Retrieve
- ≤ 1.0 m/s
- Lures
- 12 archetypes
Pick a species
Largemouth bass
Ambush generalist. Wide tolerance, strong reaction strikes, forgiving of an unnatural action if the trigger is right.
cold 13 · optimum 27 · warm 31 °Csomething eaten in 4 of 12 scenariosSmallmouth bass
Sight-dominant in clear water. Will run a long way to a bait, and inspect it far more carefully than a largemouth.
cold 10 · optimum 21 · warm 26 °Csomething eaten in 3 of 12 scenariosWalleye
Low-light specialist, tapetum lucidum. Deliberate rather than aggressive — dislikes a frantic action.
cold 7 · optimum 20 · warm 24 °Csomething eaten in 2 of 12 scenariosNorthern pike
Ambush predator built for one explosive lunge. Wants a big profile and a lot of displacement.
cold 6 · optimum 18 · warm 23 °Csomething eaten in 2 of 12 scenariosRainbow trout
Cold-water sight feeder with excellent colour vision. Small forage, and the least tolerant of anything that looks wrong.
cold 5 · optimum 14 · warm 19 °Csomething eaten in 1 of 12 scenariosBluegill
Tiny forage, tiny strike zone. Included mostly to show what a size mismatch looks like.
cold 13 · optimum 24 · warm 29 °Csomething eaten in 0 of 12 scenariosStrongest result per species
How these pages are made
Nothing on a scenario page is written by hand except the labels. At build time, each lure archetype's grid goes through the Tank's physics, its colour through the optics model for that water and that species' eyes, and both into the same evaluate() call The Fish runs in your browser. Every verdict, reason and fix on these pages is the model's output, and every row links back into the simulator so you can check it or change it.
This is a model, and its species values are working assumptions that have not been calibrated against field observations. Some lure types, such as lipless baits and glide baits, are outside what the Tank can model; the lipless archetype is listed on each page but not ranked. Read where this model is wrong.