What color of jig should you throw?
As Greg talks about here objects can look a lot different when viewed under water vs when they are viewed in the open air. This is because water affects the behavior of light. 25% of light is absorbed before it reaches a depth of 1/2" below the surface. at 3 ft only 45% of light actually penetrates. By the time you get to 30' in the water column 78% of the light has been absorbed. This is all based upon crystal clear water, sunny sky, and no wind.
If you check out the following videos, he's provided for us he really dives in deep (no pun intended) to how all these variables affect the visibility of the lure we are running below the surface.
https://youtu.be/tpQTh_tnJ6c 1.
https://youtu.be/TTi5nJqEzvo 2.
https://youtu.be/QTqyVX3oZk0 3.
https://youtu.be/p5P6UMGiT7o 4.
As he sums up the first video, the main take away, he states is that having a variety of colors in a lure is much more important when fishing shallow, non-affected waters. The deeper you go, the less, bright flashy colors will be perceived as thus. Colors in the green-blue range will be much more visible.
In the second video he begins to build on the fact that it's not what fish can see but it's what available for them to see that's important. He uses the example of 2 people being in a pitch-black room together. He illustrates one person asking the other, "what color of shirt am I wearing?" the second person would not be able to answer that question because the room is pitch-black. Is that because the first person's eyes can't see the color? or because the shirt does not have any color? No. It's because there isn't enough light to illuminate the appropriate wave lengths for the colors to be perceived.
In the third video he breaks down how ripples in the water on a windy day affect how light penetrates the water. His conclusion for this video (you really should watch the video it's very informative) is on windy days colors in the red-orange spectrum are significantly less effective because their visibility is greatly reduced.
Finally, we get to part 4 of his presentation where he discusses how visibility is affected by dirty water. Again, just as the visibility of the red/orange/yellow colors are the first to go under windy conditions, their effectiveness ( at least in the sense of visibility ) is reduced.
To sum everything up a wide variety of colors will be much more affective in clean, clear, non-affected water. In deep water most colors are lost, the first being red and the last being dark blues. In deep water (for visibilities sake) it is better to use darker blue-black. In muddy water it is better to use blue-black to overpower the stained waters.
Everything presented here can be looked at like this. The less conditions present in the water the more effective color is in water. The more conditions present the less visibile color is. Hopefully the information Greg has presented to us will guide you in picking the right color of the next lure you throw! Thanks for your time and reading this article. If there is anything we can help you with here at Pine Outdoors please do not hesitate to reach out. Good luck and God bless!