I have so many colors and I buy a lot of them because they look good to me. Not sure the bass are digging them all and I’d like to reduce what I carry.

What are your go to / favorite colors based on water and visibility.

1. Clear sky - clear water
2. Clear sky - stained water
3. Cloudy sky - clear water
4. Cloudy sky - stained water

Does temperature or time of year make a difference?
What about fishing at night?

I'm just like you! If it looks cool/good I'll buy a pack lol.

The colors I end up throwing the most-
Cali 420
Watermelon red(tails dipped in chartreuse)
Okeechobee craw
Rayburn bug(purple with darker purple and flakes).

If by clear water, you mean 5ft+visibility. And stained water less than a foot of visibility.

1 watermelon red
2 Green pumpkin
3 watermelon red
4 black

With partially stained water (somewhere between 1-4ft of visibility) is when I think it matters the most; I try to match the tinge color of the water in those circumstances.

With that said, most of the time, the presentation is many times more important than color

Color can be more important during brief windows;
Late prespawn/bass spawn/ bluegill spawns/ dip in a little dye
Shad spawn, pearl colors

Night fishing: yellow/white laminates and black

Because I don’t think it matters most of the time, I tend to buy what’s on sale.

CS - CW - green pumpkin
CS - SW - Cali 420, green pumpkin red flake, watermelon candy (dipped), black w/red flake)
CL - CW - green pumpkin, Cali 420
CL - SW - black w/red flake, Cali 420

I have narrowed my colors down to this: these are the exact boxes I carry. It’s made my life so much simpler and allowed me to be more decisive.

Green box - watetmelon, watermelon red, green pumpkin and several green one-offs like Mardi-gras or GP red
Black box - Will have my dark colors. Mostly black blue and a few others
Red- mostly red but also pink and Berkeley blue fleck

I also carry a fluke box and a finesse box.

That’s it. If fish won’t bite something from that, then so be it. I’m not carrying every color made.

Clear water = natural color most of the time like a green.
Stained = I may go darker like black blue. But many times I still get bit on a green.

Keep it simple and get more bites.

I learned this from David Dudley so I think it’s pretty reliable.

I fish the normal colors in clear water and just dye the tails if the water is stained and if muddy switch to the dark colors like black and blue. temp does really affect much unless it is winter time lol then still normal colors but craw fish colored cranks do well.

I have spent my entire life basing my colors around your 4 criteria. If you will PM me your Email Address I can send you the pictures of the following.
- My 5 best spinner baits for those conditions. This not only requires skirt colors; but also requires specific blade combinations.
- I have narrowed the selection of plastics down to the 14 that have produced best for me over all these years. In working with Dustin at NTX most are laminate for what we call fishing the Edge Of Light during all seasons, lake and weather conditions. The laminate colors of the plastic breaking form the shaded cover to the sunlight make them much more real to larger fish. Making a bait as real as possible has always produced more bites.

Night fishing research will give you tons of information. This is the research that I base my bait selection on. There is no doubt in my mind that success at night comes from smaller bodies of water, being extremely quite and fishing without any lights. Black is the big producer in as clear of water as you can find. I will also send you my article which was posted here about the Night Research and pictures of the best baits to throw.

This is how I do it, your mileage may very. If you can see the bottom, try to get a similar color. If you can not see the bottom, try to match the water color. If you look at bait fish in their habitat, they usually blend in very good. Same thing with young crawfish, they are nearly clear in color. also, pay more attention to the glitter colors in your baits. Any light penetration will bring that color out much more than you plastic colors.