Kevin Van Dam Forums

You always see references to water clarity and choosing baits as a result but you don’t ever know exactly what they mean. In Orlando, stained to me is about a foot and a half of visibility. I have yet to experience what I imagine is a clear lake.

How or what do you guys use to classify water clarity?

That’s a really good question. For me anything under 2 foot of clarity I would consider stained. But I imagine if would differ from angler to angler.

It’s different depending on where you’re at & the angler you’re asking, as to what’s considered clear, stained, dirty. In the southwest, a lot of those lakes & reservoirs you can see the bottom in 20’ of water, I bet they’d think the ponds I fish here in IA where I consider 4-5’ clear would be dirty as hell. To me, dirty equals a lure disappearing in less than 1’ while stained is 3-4’ & clear is anything beyond that.

I don’t think there is any set numbers for water clarity in the fishing industry. It is all dependent on where you live.

For me, clear is being able to see the bottom in 3-4 feet of water.
Stained is being able to see it in about 1 foot of water.
Muddy is not being able to see the bottom or the lure in under a foot. You see this right after a rain, or if you are fishing a river that is running high.

Then of course you have what I call crystal clear. This is being able to see the bottom in 10-20’ of water. Pretty rare to see a lake like this, and they are typically very hard to fish.

The standard I heard was a white dinner plate at 3 feet…

i think KVD classifies it this way. 3-4 feet and further and you can still see your bait is clear. 2 feet or 18 inches is stained, anything less is heavily stained or muddy.

What color bait do you use to test water clarity? Obviously a white bait is going to show up much farther down than a black or green pumpkin would.

Same with the dinner plate. I could probably throw a dinner plate in 4-5 feet of water and see it in the Miss river, but I would not classify that as anything but plain muddy.

Usually the people who make lake maps use a schecci disk. Its a white disk about the size of a dinner plate that get lowered into the water. Most of the lake I fish here are either gin clear and deep, or stained and shallow.

BBK - 24 May 2012 02:39 PM

What color bait do you use to test water clarity? Obviously a white bait is going to show up much farther down than a black or green pumpkin would.

Same with the dinner plate. I could probably throw a dinner plate in 4-5 feet of water and see it in the Miss river, but I would not classify that as anything but plain muddy.

me, i usually start fishing throwing a spinnerbait with a white or a white/chartreuse skirt. if i can see the spinnerbait all the way back to me it’s clear. if i can’t see it all the way back it’s stained. i have yet to see the water muddy in the ponds i fish. in the summer it doesn’t really matter they get so weedy and matted. if there is an algae bloom acrossed the whole lake, i generally stay home and drink beer.

I use a white spinnerbait to judge water clarity.  If you can’t see the bait after about a foot I say its muddy,  5-6 feet its staind and anything past that its clear and if you can see the bait past 15-20 feet its gin clear.  Most of the time our water up here is clear to gin clear see bottom in 20, 30 and even 40 feet of water is pretty common.