Hey guys so I am really wanting to get into throwing swimbaits. However I have started noticing a lot of people that use them seem to be fishing clear water. I live in North Carolina, so a lot of my lakes around here are not extremely clear. The lake I spend the most time on usually varies anywhere from 12-30 inches of visibility. I want to throw a BBZ-1 6in, so I would think that it should be fine, but I just want to be sure before I start getting some money together for the set-up.

I'm in north TX, none of our lakes are clear either.  I had the same hesitations when I first started throwing swimbaits but I realized that bass have no trouble finding other baits in dirty water.  They can hone in on a slim shaky head worm or a weightless Senko falling through the water column.  They have no trouble finding a large swimbait and sensing the disturbance it creates.  

Awesome thank you! That is what I expected, I just wanted to hear it from someone else haha. Thanks again!

The big baits move a lot of water, even if they don't do it with a lot of the traditional thump or vibration of normal bass lures. Most of our lakes are pretty stained in NE KS and they still manage to find them. 

In clear water bass are sight feeders, in muddy water they use sound and lateral line to find their food.

If water is stained almost all the time then the fish adapt but the waters I fish are clear most of the time and when the water gets dirty a swim bait is not good, we tend to use them like jerkbaits, 2' of visibility and more.

I tend to do better in dirty water with hard baits.

Part of the lure of the big swimbaits is also that they make them fairly realistic in looks and in action.

Those sight characteristics are diminished in heavy stained though the action and water displacement can be detected via lateral line

So I'd say realistic swimbaits are at their max effectiveness in clearwater .. in stained there are competitors and alternatives