ok guys i need a little help here, what colour or visibility would you say this water is? this was taken in late september the ledge you see is roughly 3'-5' below the surface 

Around here that is clear water, but I don't know what that lake is usually like.

Tannic.

would make sense since there are a lot of leaves so it's tea coloured 

1 hour ago, Bankbeater said:

Around here that is clear water, but I don't know what that lake is usually like.

that's normal for this lake i've just never really tried to figure out what colour it is 

It's "stained" (also "tannic" or "tea-colored" -if you only drink black tea ). Lotsa anglers confuse "stain" with "turbidity". The former is due to dissolved organic material -usually from leaves, vegetation, wood. The latter refers to material suspended in the water such as algae, plant, or soil particles (usually from clay to silts).

This is "clear" water:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqCLApHsqzs

2 hours ago, Bankbeater said:

Around here that is clear water, but I don't know what that lake is usually like.

Lol, I have to agree with Bankbeater.  To me that's clear.  But I'm also used to fishing in waters like this.

this is normally what the tap will look like up there i know that's a little more filtered than it is in the lake but it isn't that dark

 

I would call that stained water. It's about the same clarity as the water here in Illinois, but ours has a green tint instead of brown.

1 minute ago, mbtharp1 said:

I would call that stained water. It's about the same clarity as the water here in Illinois, but ours has a green tint instead of brown.

well i guess my swimbait bite will be a little less than expected

I'd call it fished!

Cause I'd be on it like white on rice!

Agree with J & Paul

Colour in the Qweens English!

Tanic is the right word for stained brown. 

You should have good water clarity for sight feeding bass with your swimbaits.

If you are curious make a Succhi disk drop it down on the string, should be able to see it down at 8-10'. A white spinnerbaits also works, drop it down until it disappears, lift up with the rod to determine depth.

Tom

Color and visibility aren't on and the same.

I'd call 5ft of visibility (as the OPer mentions) pretty "clear" -referring to how deep one can see down- and stained brown (tannic).

Clarity is usually more apt to to be affected by turbidity than staining simply due to respective particle sizes and sheer amount of them.

Bingo.  That looks like a lot of visibility and the freedom to fish almost anything.  Natural colors and maybe a chartreuse dip on plastics would be my go to.  

I remember fishing a lake in Ontario south of Kenora called Highwind.The water in Highwind  looked like black coffe, very dark brown stained water. The odd thing it was a good trout lake with big Pike, granite rock with no vegetation that we found. We used silver 1oz Kastmaster spoons that looked gold in the water and you could see the spoon easily from 50 feet away 5 feet down. The Pike hammered the spoons, they were almost black very dark green color. We kept a lake trout and a Pike, all the fish had salmon red meat,  indicating the fish were feeding on snails. Darkest Tanic water that I ever fished and the fishing was good.

Tom

Looks like tannic water with decent visibility.Bass should bite well.

20 minutes ago, WRB said:

I remember fishing a lake in Ontario south of Kenora called Highwind.The water in Highwind  looked like black coffe, very dark brown stained water. The odd thing it was a good trout lake with big Pike, granite rock with no vegetation that we found. We used silver 1oz Kastmaster spoons that looked gold in the water and you could see the spoon easily from 50 feet away 5 feet down. The Pike hammered the spoons, they were almost black very dark green color. We kept a lake trout and a Pike, all the fish had salmon red meat,  indicating the fish were feeding on snails. Darkest Tanic water that I ever fished and the fishing was good.

Tom

Many far northern lakes are very dark stained, being fed by bogs -"bog stained" they are called. 

thanks a lot for all the info guys much appreciated

scarborough

22 hours ago, Paul Roberts said:

Color and visibility aren't on and the same.

I'd call 5ft of visibility (as the OPer mentions) pretty "clear" -referring to how deep one can down, and stained brown (tannic).

Clarity is usually more apt to to be affected by turbidity than staining simply due to respective particle sizes and sheer amount of them.

I was going to say the same thing.  I've fished a lot of tannic waters that had a few feet of visibility.  In my region, 5 feet of visibility is clear water.

I'd fish it with a combination of natural color and brighter color baits. It's borderline stained to me. Slightly stained?

Stained water with good visability.

If its tanic water colored, use sprayed grass zoom worm color. My high school bass coach taught me that!

6 minutes ago, EricTheAngler said:

If its tanic water colored, use sprayed grass zoom worm color. My high school bass coach taught me that!

I've used sprayed grass in the past it has never produced for me black and blue and bluegill colours seem to do the best. though next year i will be trying trout since there used to be brook trout in the lake 

16 minutes ago, Scarborough817 said:

I've used sprayed grass in the past it has never produced for me black and blue and bluegill colours seem to do the best. though next year i will be trying trout since there used to be brook trout in the lake 

Oh, I guess i live in northcarolina with different factors along with tanic acid. Good luck man!