Is yellow really the best colour?

Take a look at any of the underwater shots that I have taken over the years and you will see there is almost always a green tinge to the water, particularly in the warmer months. Yellow is at the green end of the light spectrum, and in bright sunlight or clearer water the light that makes it down to the bottom of the lake is greeny yellow in colour. This effectively gives everything a greeny yellow tinge and if you want camouflage, the best thing to do is to pick a colour than matches the surroundings and light. If you want something to stand out, make it as different as possible.

Consider also that if there is weed in the lake it will be green in colour when you look at it from above. However, when you look at it from the side or underneath in particular, it looks more yellowy in colour. Next time you catch some Canadian Pondweed, our most common and prevalent weed, have a look what colour the stem and underside of the leaves are: yellow!

With yellow baits we’re very often matching the surroundings and from a distance yellow baits are actually quite hard to spot. When I’m doing my tests I ask the guys to use a red or pink bait as often as possible as they are much easier to find.

Before anyone turns around and says I’m looking with human eyes rather than through the eyes of a fish I’m very well aware of that, but light spectrums are light spectrums, and to the best of my understanding, the fish eyes work in a basically similar way to ours when it comes to differentiating colours. It’s the colour difference that makes a bait stand out, and if
the fish can see colours of weed as being yellowy green they will do the same with your bait.

I suspect that the original thought for this myth comes form the fact that anglers believe silt to be black (which of course
it isn’t), and that yellow stands out well over black (which it does!). The upper layers of silt that are oxygenated by the water are much lighter in colour, and it’s the decaying darker stuff below that is black.

Taking the Oxford pits as an example, the silt is a light tan colour, the Essex pits slightly more orange, and in the Cotswold’s it’s a light yellow just like the stone that you see the houses are built from. Yellow baits certainly work, but not because they are the most visible down there. That is reserved for red and pink!