Bluegill in cold muddy water (13 °C): which lure gets eaten
The bluegill model is shown 11 generic lure archetypes, each tried in all eight colours, under one fixed set of conditions. None of them get eaten. The furthest any gets is the deep diver: "Never detected it." The lipless rattle is outside what the Tank models and is listed unranked.
- Species
- Bluegill
- Water temp
- 13 °C · cold water
- Water
- Muddy water
- Mood
- Neutral fish
- Depth · light
- 2 m · noon
- Retrieve
- 0.6 m/s
- Metabolism
- 26%
- Eaten
- 0 / 11
The ranking
Ordered by how far through detect → approach → track → commit each lure got, then by how strongly. Each lure is shown in its best-scoring colour. The verdict, reason and fix are the model's own words; the same text you get in The Fish.
- 01Deep diver110 mm · wobble 9.0
Never detected it.
Not detectedThe fish was too far outside its reaction distance to bother.
Change colour to something that separates from this background, or fish it closer.
- 02Wakebait120 mm · wobble 8.7
Never detected it.
Not detectedThe fish was too far outside its reaction distance to bother.
Change colour to something that separates from this background, or fish it closer.
- 03Square-bill80 mm · wobble 5.4
Never detected it.
Not detectedThe fish was too far outside its reaction distance to bother.
Change colour to something that separates from this background, or fish it closer.
- 04Medium diver80 mm · wobble 3.8
Never detected it.
Not detectedThe fish was too far outside its reaction distance to bother.
Change colour to something that separates from this background, or fish it closer.
- 05Flat-side80 mm · wobble 1.0
Never detected it.
Not detectedThe fish was too far outside its reaction distance to bother.
Add a rattle chamber or more lip area — in water this dirty, displacement beats colour.
- 06Jerkbait120 mm · wobble 0.8
Never detected it.
Not detectedThe fish was too far outside its reaction distance to bother.
Add a rattle chamber or more lip area — in water this dirty, displacement beats colour.
- 07Trout minnow60 mm · wobble 1.0
Never detected it.
Not detectedThe fish was too far outside its reaction distance to bother.
Add a rattle chamber or more lip area — in water this dirty, displacement beats colour.
- 08Pike bait150 mm · wobble 6.2
Never detected it.
Not detectedThe fish was too far outside its reaction distance to bother.
Change colour to something that separates from this background, or fish it closer.
- 09Micro crank30 mm · wobble 0.1
Never detected it.
Not detectedThe fish was too far outside its reaction distance to bother.
Add a rattle chamber or more lip area — in water this dirty, displacement beats colour.
- 10Top-heavy fail80 mm · wobble 0.0
It never got a look.
Rolled overThe bait is lying on its side and skating. Fish ignore it because nothing in the water moves like that.
Move ballast below the centreline until the Tank says it swims.
- 11No-lip control80 mm · wobble 0.0
No driven action.
—This lure has no working lip and line tie pair to make it swim on a steady retrieve.
Add a lip below the line tie, then check the swim test in the Tank.
- —Lipless rattle100 mm
Not ranked
Outside the modelIts action comes from body shape, which the Tank does not model: it only scores wobble from lip drag, so it reads this bait as having no action. The fish model is never shown a fair version of it, so it is listed here and not ranked.
Why it came out this way
At 13 °C the model runs a bluegill at 26% of peak metabolism (optimum 24 °C, feeds between 8 and 32 °C), which caps its chase at 0.6 m/s. Every lure here is retrieved at 1.0 m/s, or just under the fish's top chase speed if that is lower: 0.6 m/s in this scenario. The page tests the lure rather than the reel.
- 9 of 11 were never detected. At 2 m in muddy water, no colour separated from the background enough to see, and the lure did not displace enough water for a bluegill's lateral line.
How water type eats colour → - 1 of 11 never swam properly, so the fish model never got a look at them. That is a Tank verdict, the same in every scenario.
How the Tank decides a bait swims →
Change one thing
The same bluegill, with a single condition changed.
This page is model output, not field data. The species values behind it, including temperatures, prey sizes, preferred action and reaction distance, are working assumptions that have not been calibrated against observations. The lures are generic archetypes, not products. Read where this model is wrong before trusting a ranking, and treat it as a hypothesis to test on the water.