Posts: 2091
Location: Stevens Point, WI | Generally speaking, bright colored and LOUD baits are very good on stained waters. The river here is very stained and those baits are top producers. On clear water more often than not natural colors are best, such as perch, shad, ciscoe colors...match the hatch so to speak. Try to identify what the baitfish are in the body of water and match accordingly. Though these presentations are definately not set in stone, you will find on somedays in clear water is a weird color like pink that triggers the fish. Your selection of baits should include different varieties of topwaters like loud ones (topraiders,pacemakers,topper stoppers etc.) quieter ones (flaptails, creepers). Large and small bucktails and spinnerbaits. You should also have some large and small minnow/twitch baits in both deep diving and shallow diving models. And then there are jerkbaits....some of the easier ones for beginners are Manta's, Zig-Zags, Phantoms. Reef Hawgs and suicks are also very good baits.
Don't be afraid to go on E-bay and buy a cache of used baits, will save you a lot of money, also check on the Buy,Sell,Trade thread for really good deals on used baits. Hope all this mumbling helps a little. |
Patterns for stained vs clear lakes