My biggest smallmouths have came on chart willows w a white chart skirt, i usually dont fish a trailer unless its a gill pattern. For baitfish patterns i typically lean nickel willows but have been playing with copper more. Copper indiana ussually on my gill patterns. Im playing with some new colors. Caught a sixteen in smallie on the black colorado just testing it out. Impressive considering ive never caught a smallie on a big colorado before.

 

Usually nickel, at night black. 

Solid chartreuse. 

 

Allen 

1 hour ago, Munkin said:

Solid chartreuse. 

 

Allen 

I've got a solid chartreuse spinnerbait with 2 big painted Colorado blades on it I use in really dirty water. My buddy laughed when I broke it out in a tournament once when the water was cold and muddy. 2 of our 5 fish limit that won the tournament for us were on that bait. 

I use gold and copper most of the time, any conditions. The main reason is that all of my waters have a lot bluegill and sunfish forage, while very few have any shad. Most species of sunfish have some gold/copper coloring, so I like some of the same color in the flash.  Not that silver isn't good or doesn't work, the golds and coppers just seem to get bit more consistently.  Not sure I've ever caught a bass on a painted blade, but I haven't tried them much.

 

I also like sunfish-y patterned skirts, like this "pumpkinseed" one  from Siebert:

 

2 minutes ago, MIbassyaker said:

Most species of sunfish have some gold/copper coloring, so I like some of the same color in the flash.  Not that silver isn't good or doesn't work, the golds and coppers just seem to get bit more consistently. 

I used this same reasoning when I was throwing a lot of gold blades regardless of conditions this summer. They worked good, but faded off for some reason. But I changed both the blade color and blade type when I started throwing silver this fall, so who's to tell what actually accounted for the increase in success. I think there's arguments for both sides of this, in trying to match the hatch or not. @Catt on old post said he likes to use copper blades when imitating bluegill, I believe, if my memory serves me right. But I know people on here who have said, and recently so, that they have always thrown a white spinnerbait when it does not resemble a bluegill at all even while fishing ponds that don't have shad. 

 

Spinnerbaits are confusing to me sometimes. Right now, I find one that works and just stay with it.

5 minutes ago, LrgmouthShad said:

But I know people on here who have said, and recently so, that they have always thrown a white spinnerbait when it does not resemble a bluegill at all even while fishing ponds that don't have shad.

 

I catch them on white spinnerbaits too, I just never seem to encounter situations where white/silver is clearly better.  I suppose if there are a lot of bluegill around, then "thing moving around in the shallows" kind of resembles a bluegill no matter what color it is.

38 minutes ago, MIbassyaker said:

I catch them on white spinnerbaits too, I just never seem to encounter situations where white/silver is clearly better.

got it ?

When i think chart/white, i think frog. Some of those ponds you talk of very likely could be stuffed full of them. This is the case with one of my streams. Thats why i do so well on toads.