1 minute ago, Lottabass said:

Let's change the story to say your dog went into the room with the 2 cheeseburgers.  Would a dog choose the one without the string or would he nab the closest one first?

 

okay let’s take this further, Dr Pavlov - what if the one with the string immediately delivers a nice 12V shock the minute the dog bites - or better yet - the one with the string has hooks in it and the dog gets hooks stuck in its mouth - won’t be long before the dog is afraid of you, experiments, meat, string and every other thing that doesn’t align with its biological destiny to eat and procreate the way God intended.

 

A virgin bass may indeed go for the one that lands closest and has a string etc but they learn/become conditioned/whatever you would like to call it - fairly fast when your experiment is not conducted in an academic theoretical vacuum.

2 minutes ago, Lottabass said:

Let's change the story to say your dog went into the room with the 2 cheeseburgers.  Would a dog choose the one without the string or would he nab the closest one first?

 

A dog wouldn't infer that a burger with a string was a trap, BUT a dog that had been hooked by a burger with a string might avoid all burgers with strings going forward.  I visited a friend yesterday, a friend my dog loves. We approached her house from a different direction. Her house is a white house with black shutters on a street of white houses with black shutters, but when he saw her  house, he started squealing. That's discernment of a higher order than a burger with a string because all the houses look the same.

@Pat Brown- I can't recall if it was an article or video posted here or where (most likely youtube and maybe BFHQ) about a study that was done 'down south' a number of years back.  The researchers took a set of 4 basically identical ponds and put fresh from the hatchery bass in them.  The left two ponds alone at first and fished the first two (call it 1 and 2 for sake of argument) with the exact same bait for the same amount of time (I think it was a senko).  Both had extraordinary catch rates at first.  Then over time the bass got used to the bait and rates dropped.  They kept fishing rates the same but in pond #2 they changed the color of the bait.  There was an immediate bump in rates (not as high as the initial) which then dropped down the same as the initial color did.  Pond #1 rate stayed low.

 

They then introduced some of the bass from ponds 1 and 2 into 3 and 4.  Remember 3 and 4 were identical to 1 and 2 initially so you'd expect the catch rates to be similar to the initial rates.  But what they found were much lower rates, more in line with the 'conditioned bass' from 1/2.  The conclusion was that the conditioned bass from 1/2 deterred the bass in 3/4 from hitting in some way.

 

It was a pretty well done study and I'd love to see the published/reviewed paper for it.  It clearly showed that bass can be conditioned by seeing baits, that changing baits helps for a while, and that bass can learn and likely teach others.  

Katie, "That's discernment of a higher order".

So is that experience, intelligence. instinct, emotion?  Or all of them?

I know you are thinking, what kinda rabbit hole am I going down?  Just trying to make people think, I guess.  It's winter and I ain't fishing so that's my excuse!!

@casts_by_fly @Pat Brown  Good reply.  Great study!

15 minutes ago, Lottabass said:

So is that experience, intelligence. instinct, emotion?  Or all of them?

 

It's intelligence, motivated by emotion. Now, when I drive to my friend's house, I use cues not available to my dog. I know the street names. I know that my friend's house has a sloped bed of Japanese Splurge in front. I know that there's a Blood good Japanese maple on the corner of her house. I know the look of her home's portico. It has two dormers in front and distinctive corbels. So, words are assisting me. My dog has none of these aids. 

 

However, motivated by emotion (He LOVES my friend and she LOVES him.), he has learned to discern. 

 

I found @casts_by_fly's study to shine a searchlight on bass. The part about knowledge being transferred was wicked cool. Who knew? Not me, for sure. It reminds me of whale song, where humpbacks on one side of the world will change their song and humpbacks on the other side of the world do so at the same time. How? Again, who knows?

@casts_by_fly - it is often the smallest fish that teach the biggest fish long before they are ever inclined to take a swipe at our lure.  I fully agree with the findings of this study and essentially - when bass are schooling and hunting they’re near impossible to catch around here - precisely because all it takes is ONE measly dink being afraid of a vision 110 and the whole 50 fish school will completely avoid it.  When they’re aggressive and protective and in a more individualistic mode around their beds, leading up to spawning, while spawning and after they spawn, I feel we have our best shot at tricking a large one with an artificial lure, albeit still a tall order most of the time. 
 

I think for the most part, we catch the dumb fish even when we catch a bigger smarter fish - the really smart ones of all sizes probably almost never get caught.  Different fish have different personalities etc.

" It reminds me of whale song, where humpbacks on one side of the world will change their song and humpbacks on the other side of the world do so at the same time. How? Again, who knows?"

 

The magic of the natural world, gotta love it!

25 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

it is often the smallest fish that teach the biggest fish long before they are ever inclined to take a swipe at our lure.  I fully agree with the findings of this study and essentially - when bass are schooling and hunting they’re near impossible to catch around here - precisely because all it takes is ONE measly dink being afraid of a vision 110 and the whole 50 fish school will completely avoid it.

 

I have never observed this, but I don't doubt Professor Pat. Only a fool would doubt Pat and my mama didn't raise fools.

 

18 minutes ago, Lottabass said:

The magic of the natural world, gotta love it!

 

I do love the inexplicable. 

Black/blue is the killer soft plastic color in my region of SC. But it's not for reaction baits unless the water is zero visibility-I'm thinking of a single Colorado bladed spinnerbait I have that was designed for night fishing. I've caught a total of 1 bass during the day on it. But I have caught them on brighter colors, even in dingy water. 

I kind of think this thread went off the rails a little. To the OP, I believe the black /blue color is a staple for representing a larger single prey item, Bluegill, craw, worm, etc. An A-rig is meant to represent a school of minnows, shad. Most of these are silver, white, gray. That is not to say an A-rig or spinnerbait with black/blue will not work under the right conditions, water clarity, depth, sky conditions, etc. I say give it a try. Waterways can be very different and the fish can relate to different food or lure colors. One lake Chartruese is the hot color, but a lake a mile away they do not even look at chartruese. 

1 hour ago, Lottabass said:

Let's change the story to say your dog went into the room with the 2 cheeseburgers.  Would a dog choose the one without the string or would he nab the closest one first?

My dog would grab them both at the same time and consider the string a bonus.

On 12/14/2025 at 7:50 PM, Boondocks Hunter said:

Ok, I have figured out that Black/Blue is definitely the hot color in my home lake. My question is whether or not that is still a good choice for baits like Spinnerbaits, jerkbaits, small swimbaits for an A-rig and the minnows for a hover rig type bait. At my local stores these kind of baits are almost always centered around white, pearl and holographic colors. What do y’all think?  Also, there is no shad to speak of in my lake but there are lots of bluegill and crappie. Thanks y’all. 

It’s worth a shot trying black and blue for spinnerbaits and swim baits. My primary colors for spinnerbaits are chartreuse, chartreuse white, and black and blue. For jerkbaits you could try silver/black back, or blue/ back black as a starting point and adjust from there. 
 

while color selection might not always be a top priority all the time, there are times when the proper color is absolutely crucial. For me, that is enough to have a variety of colors at the ready. You don’t need to go crazy though, for my confidence baits I might have like 5 or so color options. For baits I fish to give the fish a different look, I generally have 2-3 colors in the boat. 

I have success with black and blue, straight black, and black chart. spinnerbaits.  Most of the time when I am fishing these colors I am either crawling them along the bottom, more like a jig, or fishing them on the surface.  The middle of the water column I generally use lighter colors.  This also goes along other popular baits and methods.  It is popular to use black as a topwater bait, even in the middle of the day, and black and blue jigs are in almost every box.

 

Do I change the color of my spinnerbait every time I change my retrieve depth?  Of course not.  I catch many bass on a black spinnerbait that I am bring back off the bottom, or one I let sink while mostly fishing on top.  If I plan on buzzing the spinnerbait it will most likely be a dark color, as well as If I'm mostly be fishing mid column I will use a light color. 

 

Crankbaits I start with chartreuse and black and switch to more natural colors if that doesn't work.  Purple with a black back is a real sleeper color for me.  The first one I bought was a Model A in the color selector pattern, and I have been fishing that color combination long after the color selector craze was gone.

 

"I kind of think this thread went off the rails a little."   @rboat @Boondocks Hunter

Yes, my fault.  I apologize.

For what it’s worth - off the topic or not - I think the discussion here is pertinent to the OP and can stimulate good critical thinking for any angler pondering color selection for more than a few seconds a  day.  He got lots of direct answers also - I think it was a good thread and discussion @Lottabass !  

We have all witnessed a color change, or size or action .... make all the difference in the world. I could bore you with a dozen stories where a slight change turned the day around. I have caught a lot of bass with black, black/blue, black chartreuse spinnerbaits.Historically, for me,  black seems to draw larger but fewer bites.

It seems like bass love black and blue. And I stocked up on white and chartreuse spinnerbaits and other lures this winter. Dang it!

 

1 hour ago, Pat Brown said:

For what it’s worth - off the topic or not - I think the discussion here is pertinent to the OP and can stimulate good critical thinking for any angler pondering color selection for more than a few seconds a  day.  He got lots of direct answers also - I think it was a good thread and discussion @Lottabass !  

 

I agree times 3,000.

Spinnerbaits Sexy mouse or Spot remover from War Eagle

There’s one pond that I fish where I have never caught a single fish on a white spinnerbait, but i have a black spinnerbait with black and red strands that will catch them all day there. I have never caught a fish on that spinnerbait anywhere else, but it works great in that pond. You’ll never know unless you try it.

 

A mouse colored spinnerbait is one of my favorite, and most successful spinnerbait colors anywhere I fish.