Bluegill in too-warm clear water (29 °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 micro crank: "Refused at close range." The lipless rattle is outside what the Tank models and is listed unranked.
- Species
- Bluegill
- Water temp
- 29 °C · too warm
- Water
- Clear water
- Mood
- Neutral fish
- Depth · light
- 2 m · noon
- Retrieve
- 0.9 m/s
- Metabolism
- 55%
- 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.
- 01Micro crank30 mm · wobble 0.1
Refused at close range.
RefusedIt got close enough to inspect, and the bait does not hold up to inspection — the action is stiff and the fall looks wrong.
Loosen the action slightly, or present it where the fish has less time to look — cover, low light, dirtier water.
- 02Trout minnow60 mm · wobble 1.0
Saw it. Did not care.
IgnoredAt 60mm this is larger than anything a bluegill is built to eat (5–30mm).
Shorten the bait, or fish for something with a bigger mouth.
- 03Square-bill80 mm · wobble 5.4
Saw it. Did not care.
IgnoredAt 80mm this is larger than anything a bluegill is built to eat (5–30mm).
Shorten the bait, or fish for something with a bigger mouth.
- 04Medium diver80 mm · wobble 3.8
Saw it. Did not care.
IgnoredAt 80mm this is larger than anything a bluegill is built to eat (5–30mm).
Shorten the bait, or fish for something with a bigger mouth.
- 05Deep diver110 mm · wobble 9.0
Saw it. Did not care.
IgnoredAt 110mm this is larger than anything a bluegill is built to eat (5–30mm).
Shorten the bait, or fish for something with a bigger mouth.
- 06Flat-side80 mm · wobble 1.0
Saw it. Did not care.
IgnoredAt 80mm this is larger than anything a bluegill is built to eat (5–30mm).
Shorten the bait, or fish for something with a bigger mouth.
- 07Jerkbait120 mm · wobble 0.8
Saw it. Did not care.
IgnoredAt 120mm this is larger than anything a bluegill is built to eat (5–30mm).
Shorten the bait, or fish for something with a bigger mouth.
- 08Wakebait120 mm · wobble 8.7
Saw it. Did not care.
IgnoredAt 120mm this is larger than anything a bluegill is built to eat (5–30mm).
Shorten the bait, or fish for something with a bigger mouth.
- 09Pike bait150 mm · wobble 6.2
Saw it. Did not care.
IgnoredAt 150mm this is larger than anything a bluegill is built to eat (5–30mm).
Shorten the bait, or fish for something with a bigger mouth.
- 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 29 °C the model runs a bluegill at 55% of peak metabolism (optimum 24 °C, feeds between 8 and 32 °C), which caps its chase at 1.0 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: 0.9 m/s in this scenario. The page tests the lure rather than the reel.
- 8 of 11 were seen and ignored because they sit outside the 5–30 mm prey window the model gives a bluegill.
The approach stage and prey size → - 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 → - 1 of 11 got all the way to the fish and were refused on inspection: close enough to look, not compelling enough to eat.
The commit stage →
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.