I don't want to make this more complicated than it has to be but I am second guessing myself visibility Vs clarity.

You have 3 "basic" variations of water clarity. Clear, stained, and dirty. I have always defined the waters clarity by how far down into the water I can see. Please correct me as I may be wrong. Let's assume we are in 10 feet of water. My definition was that in "clear" water you had visibility between the surface down 10 feet, the bottom or close to it. When I say visibility I'm not talking counting fish scales, I talking there's the bottom and there's is a fish next to the log. Stained was from the surface down 5 feet, you can still see fairly good but can't make out if it is a rock or a small stump. Dirty would be classified as the surface, you can't see thru it at all or you can see down only a couple of inches.

Is this how you classify the water you fish in? 

The standard outside of regional bass fishing jargon is the use of a secchi disk.

Everyone has a little different idea of what clear, off color, stained or muddy water is. For example there is gin clear, you can see down more than 50 feet.

Related to bass fishing, I believe you have it about right. I like to use a spinnerbait and drop it straight down to determine how far I can see the blades reflect light. I have fished some lakes where the water is stained from vegetation and it's clear, but tea color, and you can see the blades down to 10 feet.

You can have very clear water with an algae bloom and that doesn't affect the depth of light a great deal, but looks off color. Rain run off with a lot of suspended dirt particles; muddy water and the blades disappear within a foot.

Interesting topic, hard to standardize on.

WRB

This could be an interesting conversation to say the least but I personally believe clarity has to do with each individual body of water. Toledo Bend for instance has very clear water but it has color to it and that color changes through out the year, visibility is still 8-10'. I fish some rivers and bayous in Southwest Louisiana that are considered muddy but have visibility of about 2' under normal conditions.

I think you have it about right as well.

I'd love to get into something other than clear water, but without a fairly heavy rain it's rare. I have 3 kinds of water in my immediate area -'clear', to like 10 feet, then 'wicked clear', to like 15 feet, then there is the 'you gotta be kidding me' clear to like 20+.

The good thing is that if you're around fish, you can be fairly sure that at the very least they are seeing your bait; whether they take it or not is another story.

A-Jay

I'll try to be pithy, to keep this simple even though it's not. I think it's worth understanding.

I use visibility and clarity as separate things. Clarity pertains to the purity of water. Visibility pertains to the distance light can travel in water. Clarity affects visibility.

Clarity:

I do not use simply clear, stained, muddy bc they don't say enough. Clarity is how much light can penetrate water before being absorbed. Pure water (nothing dissolved or suspended) allows light to penetrate, suffice it to say, very deep. But no water is pure. It has:

-Suspended materials, usually algae (usually green), or soil (usually tan-brown often like coffee with cream in it).

-Dissolved materials: Usually tannins and others substances dissolved from plant and soils from the surrounding land. These, esp tannins, tend to be a reddish brown.

These can be a consistent water color or they can be transient, due to events. In my very clear ponds phytoplankton (algae) blooms following sunny periods turn the water green'. When we have lots of rain, and water levels flood shoreline plant-life, the water becomes stained due to the dissolved organics. Heavy rain may wash in both suspended and dissolved soil of course -mud. All these things reduce visibility.

Visibility:

Visibility is related to clarity in that it's how far light can penetrate in inches or feet.

The standard way of measuring visibility is to take a white lure and lower it down until it disappears and measure. Then bring it back up until it reappears and measure. Average the two. But this only tells you how far YOU can see down! To get an equal amount of light to reach a fish's eye, who's already down in the water, you then DOUBLE that number. The reason you double it is bc for you to see an object from the surface, the light has to penetrate to the object, then reflect back up to your eye; doubling the distance the light has to travel for you to see that reflection back up at the surface.

Sothe amount of light needed to illuminate the white jig you lowered down is actually double the distance. You got a surface visibility of 10ft, but that same amount of light can actually penetrate ~20ft. If you were a diver, you'd see that white jig just as well at ~20feet (in front of your nose of course).

Sohow does this work underwater for fish? Think how far light has to travel to an object of interest, and reflect over to a fish. How far away is the object from the surface and how far away from the object is the fish? Add it up. That's how light works in clear water.

Now add dissolved, or worse, suspended material and light gets absorbed, reducing visibility (distance). But light is absorbed differentially by foreign material, that is, different colors are absorbed or reflected. Algae blooms reflect green and absorb reds and blues (bc chlorophyll in these tiny plants use red and blue light, but not green). Tannins stain water a reddish brown bc they absorb greens and reflect reds and some blues. But these colors are only seen near the surface as light is quickly attenuated in affected waters.

So, for the upshot, I categorize my waters by visibility in feet or inches. I do not lower a white lure, but just how far I can see bottom, or weed tops. Then I make note of either suspended or dissolved materials and it's color'. In my neck of the woods that tends to be green from blooms, occasionally reddish from dissolved material, or rarely, muddy brown from washed in mud.

Next would come how living creature's eyes have adapted to such things. But I'll let that be asked for bc this might already be more than you expected.

The clearest fresh water lakes that I can recall fishing are both natural lalkes; lake Tahoe in California and Crow lake in Ontario Canada. Tahoe you can see pine trees laying on the bottom 75 feet down, same in Crow lake, if the water is calm and no wave action to bend the light. Lake Mead has clear water at times that allows you can see the bottom at 50 feet, DVL is similar.

Most of CA's clear reservoirs you can see the bottom clearly at 15 feet or more. I still think 10 feet is a good general depth for clear water.

How bass see is anyone's guess, at this time we don't know for sure, lots of different speculation and science that contradict each other. We do know that bass use all their senses to detect prey, sight being very important based on the size, shape and location of their eyes.

How far will a bass travel to strike a lure in clear water? at Lake Mead it's common to have bass travel over a hundred feet to hit a surface lure, you can see them coming and get ready for the strike.

WRB