Fishing - Do soft plastics & lures work in the dark or in dirty water?

That's a thought provoking question. I use plastics 95% of the time. I have good success with them.But yet, my waters I fish in is sometimes so muddy looking you can't see the lure when it is 6 inches in the water. And when I fish an area that I call clear water the water looks almost black, and visibility is still limited.

I can only answer yes to the question but can give you no specifics as to the reasons why.

enufofth... and Swamp Zombie both gave you good advice, though I would add to it. If using worms, they make glass and plastic tubes with ball bearings in them that will add a rattle. You usually push them into the worm at the egg sack. Fish can sense the sound and if close vibration from this, and bass will certainly investigate. You can also use tubes, go dark or black with them as well. If they don't work, then I'd go bright. They sell round plastic balls with bearings in them that you can shove into the tubes as well to help draw fish in in dirty water. Jigs with rattles are fished about the same as tubes, and should also work. You can also try crankbaits with rattles, but as you have no idea what's in the pond, you may lose them. Believe it or not, in dirty water I catch everything that will take a crank bait on a pink (bubblegum) colored crankbait that Strike King makes for crappie fishing, but I have caught LM Bass, SM Bass, Saugeye, etc on it. It does have rattles, and the bright color seems to work in dirty water. I just know it works well, I can not go into the details as to why it does. Hope all this helps.

Yes, fish reply heavily on sight. They can also detect vibrations in the water.

For murky waters, its good to use dark or bright colors like charteuse, orange, red, black, purple.

For night, its best to use a color that creates contrast to an already dark background, and black is best, because most of the time, even at night its never completely pitch black in the water, moonlight, or any ambient light will have enough light to create a black silhouette of the lure. Most other colors are not strong enough to create a contrast. I realized one day this theory is was true when coming home late at night, I approached my entrance door and the motion lights were out and it was really dark, I was fumbling through my keys and noticed I could only see the black color coded key covers, the yellow, and white covers were indistinguishable.

use lures that match the water. use darker colors for stained water and brighter colors for clearer water. I mainly fish dark stained water and I do the best with red shad (red and black) and junebug (purple with sparkles) try different colors of the same lure until you find what they are hitting on.

good luck

With plastics, its mostly the action (sight), that'll attract them. Using a crankbait, with a rattle, will help. And the general rule of thumb is, in clear waters, use natural colored lures, and in murky waters or at night, use dark and/or bright colors.

They rely on sight quite a lot, but when visibility is limited they also feel vibrations through their lateral lines to detect food. That's why ribbon-tail worms work better than straight-tails in dirty water, cause they pick up the tail pulsating. It also helps if the tail is pink or chartreuse.

YES crank baits which produce sound and soft baits with scent

dont fish ! how would YOU like to be hooked and pulled into the water and drowned !

It's a clone of god too, you know. he feels pain exactly the same way you do.

yes very well. the darker the color the better.