By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor


A lot of anglers – even some pros – believe that color is vastly overrated in any discussion of soft-plastic baits. Larry Nixon, who's probably garnered more accolades and banked more money fishing plastics than anyone in the game today, is not among that contingent.

"I'm a firm believer that color matters," he said. "I've just seen it happen too many times, all the way back to when I was guiding at Toledo Bend, where the guy at one end of the boat will be throwing a worm with a fire tail while everybody else is throwing plain old purple or junebug, and the guy with the fire tail will out-fish everybody else 4 to 1.

"There's no doubt in my mind that at times, color is a major-league factor."

He's quick to point out that there's no science to back his theories on which colors work best in particular situations and he's never written any of them down. They're all anecdotal and reside only inside his head.

"As far as I know, there's no real scientific evidence that fish can even see different colors," he said. "For me, it all comes from experience and just having done it."

Look at the Water

Nixon bases his bait-color selection model on the most logical of foundations – the color of the water and the calendar. From there, it's a matter of knowing which bait colors have proven to be most effective across the water-hue spectrum that resembles everything from gin to chocolate mile

For simplicity's sake, he opted to limit the scope of this discussion to worms and their derivatives, as craw imitations, creature-type baits and plastic swimbaits bring in a match-the-hatch component that requires a slightly different thought process.

He says that a basic array of five worm colors will suffice under the vast majority of water conditions. The core group consists of green-pumpkin, watermelon, watermelon red, junebug and some form of purple.

Green-pumpkin has become ubiquitous over the past decade or so and has replaced grape, which was immensely prevalent in the 1970s and '80s, as this generation's default color. There's a good reason for that.

"It works well on almost every lake I've fished in the United States," he said. "It doesn't work as well, though, when the water turns what I call brown or muddy. That's when I go to black."

Miscellaneous Musings

Here, in no particular order, are more of Nixon's thoughts regarding worm colors.

> "A chartreuse tail is often good in lakes that have (spotted bass) or smallmouths. That seems to be more important to those species than it does to largemouths, but if the largemouths are shallow and the water's not real clear and they're really on shad, then a chartreuse tail might get you a few more bites.

"Fall is when the fish tend to be on shad more than any other time, and it's when a chartreuse, white or fire tail is most effective. Those are hard to find in stores these days, but I've still get 'em and if I'm fishing around a lot of boats, I'll pull them out and usually catch more fish than the other guys do."

> "If I'm going to Florida, I'll go out to my shed and dig out all my red shad for fishing that brackish water. I hardly fish those anywhere else, but when you get on that black water anywhere around the coastal area, that color's got a flash to it like no other. It shows up in dark water and it's a really good producer."

> "Guntersville, Toledo Bend and Rayburn all have a water color that's very similar – not clear, but not muddy. When I go to those places I'm thinking junebug, candy bug or a shiny grape color, along with green-pumpkin. Light purple is good in the summer when those lakes get clearer."

> "If I'm on Murray or one of the highland lakes in Arkansas in the summer, I like watermelon red or strawberry. You have to look really hard for strawberry these days – a consumer who's hunting them is likely going to be digging on the Internet for awhile.

"When fish are looking up, I think a light pink looks like a shad body on a sunny day. They like a translucent color that they can partially see through, and it's amazing how they'll bite it sometimes. If you're throwing a dark purple or a junebug under those conditions, a lot of times you can't hardly get a bite."

> In the early spring, when the water's 50 to 65 degrees, that's when black is a really good worm or Senko color to throw. After that, I won't throw it unless the water's muddy or I'm fishing at night."

He concluded with an extremely simple piece of advice.

"One thing I always tell people at my seminars is if their going to a lake they've never been to, go to one of the biggest tackle stores around and talk to somebody there. Chances are they'll tell you two or three colors that work the best."