Top 4 Lures for Clear-Water Bass Fishing

At its core, bass fishing is pretty simple. They’re not too picky, and most beginners can catch their first largemouth without too much effort. However, as you dig deeper into the sport and start learning to maximize your productivity and catch bigger bass, it gets complicated.

One area that tends to give anglers the most problems is adapting to water conditions, whether they change due to weather or simply try a new spot with dramatically different water clarity.

Today, we will give you an in-depth guide to the four best clear-water bass lures and how to use them to get bigger fish faster and more reliably.

The Challenges of Clear Water Bass Fishing

Before discussing the lures themselves, we need to discuss why water clarity matters in bass fishing.

There are two primary reasons.

First, clear water makes it extremely easy for fish to notice you and your gear. 

Contrary to what many anglers think, your presence isn’t the most crucial part of this. Plenty of fish will swim around your boat even if you’re softly talking and fiddling with your gear. You don’t have to take it as seriously as many anglers do. 

However, your gear is another story.

In clear water, it’s a lot easier for bass to see that bullet weight awkwardly sliding around in front of your Texas rig or the line dragging it around unnaturally. These factors do make bass think twice. Bass, especially those under a lot of pressure, are used to seeing these things before getting hooked.

The other issue is that matching the hatch and adapting your lure color to what bass naturally expect is slightly different. 

Instead of bright, often neon colors, you typically want to go with white, silver, flashy options, etc. These maximize the sun's natural reflection and resemble the underwater view of bait fish such as shad and minnows.

Both of these factors are in stark contrast to when you’re fishing in the muddier, stained waters that many anglers are used to.

The Top 4 Clear Water Bass Lures

The following four lures are lures we’ve used to overcome the challenges of clear-water bass fishing and the rigs and methods that we find to be the most effective. 

There’s a solid range for all preferences, and remember that it’s not all about the lure itself. The rig is just as important.

1: Evergreen SB 125

The Evergreen SB 125 is our go-to topwater lure when the water is crystal clear for various reasons.

This plug-style lure is extra slender and relatively small compared to most Whopper Ploppers and similar prop baits but pairs well with its minnow-mimicking appearance and action.

Here are the key features to consider.

Minnow/Shad Pattern and Visual Appeal

The Evergreen SB 125 has a silvery white color pattern that mimics the natural scale pattern and color of minnows and silver shad. This helps reflect sunlight to create a bass-attracting shine and blends in with the hatch naturally. 

The slender profile maximizes this presentation as a minnow feeding on topwater debris. At the same time, a feather hook on the rear provides a little flash and movement like subtle tail action would.

Tungsten Weight System

Inside the Evergreen SB 125 is a tungsten weight system for two purposes. 

First, it clanks as you retrieve the lure, creating plenty of vibration that lesser lures can’t match.

That weight system also helps you make highly long casts with minimal effort.

Multi-Action Presentation

Finally, the Evergreen SB 125 is like having several topwater plugs packaged into one lure. Depending on how you retrieve it, it can dog-walk on the surface, bubble with pauses, or chug along and splash. 

This adds tremendous versatility, so you can try dramatically different presentations without tying on many lures.

How to Use the Evergreen SB 125

The Evergreen SB 125 is an easy lure; you can expect to catch largemouth and smallies on it consistently.

We recommend using it with a standard monofilament line that floats to maximize surface buoyancy. Bass tend to be cautious when they’re stalking a “minnow” from below and a little string is tugging them along.

Other than that, the best thing to do is start by quickly buzzing it past weed lines and structures with occasional pauses. If that doesn’t work, it’s usually a matter of slowing things down.

2: Berkley Stunna 100

The Berkley Stunna 100 is a jerkbait that excels when the bite is slow or the bass are overly cautious due to the high amount of action on the water.

We will focus specifically on the stealth-shad version of the Stunna 100 due to its white coloring with a black back and light-yellow lateral line.

Color Pattern and Visual Details

The stealth shad version's color pattern perfectly matches our preferences for clear-water bass fishing. 

Its dark ridge on the back adds a natural touch, and a light-yellow lateral line adds some visual flair. The primarily white body matches the hatch and reflects light.

This is also matched with realistic 3D details such as gill rakes, eyes, and scales to match a real shad as closely as possible visually. This is crucial in clear water when a lure’s details are more evident to the fish.

180 Erratic Action

With a jerk bait, you want an erratic and dramatic action that suddenly stops and becomes extremely subtle when you stop your retrieval, and the Stunna does that.

With each jerk of your rod tip, the Stunna shakes its head at least 180 degrees back and forth. When you stop, the lure straightens out and slowly descends.

This mimics a dying bait fish but also drums up enough action to attract lethargic fish while also slowing down to give them time to commit to the bite.

Dual Weight System

The Stunna's tungsten weight system pairs with a brass weight to create a unique sound underwater while ensuring a long cast and plenty of consistent action.

How to Use the Berkley Stunna 100

As with the previous suggestion, we recommend using a nearly invisible leader to keep fish from spotting your line. It doesn’t even have to be extended. A foot or two of fluorocarbon creates enough illusion to throw bass off.

Beyond that, the best way to use this is to wait until those days when the bass simply aren’t biting, chuck it out far in an area where bass are likely to be, and then pop the rod tip a few times quickly. After you make the lure go crazy under the water, pause for several seconds.

Since the lure is free-falling, most of the time, when you get a bite, you won’t want to wait for the pull to set the hook. Instead, watch your line. It might start gently moving back and forth.

If you wait, you can quickly lose the bass, as it has likely had the lure in its mouth for several seconds and has caught on to the trick.

3: The Drop Shot with a Clear and Silver-Flake Soft-Plastic

You have a little more leeway with this recommendation, but the emphasis is on the rig and the color pattern.

A soft-plastic lure, such as a fluke or worm combined with a drop shot, is lethal in clear water.

Why Do We Recommend This Lure Setup?

Despite not being one specific lure, there’s a reason we think this should be in everyone’s repertoire. The bass can see you and your rigs more easily. That’s true. 

However, you can also spot them.

If you get some polarized sunglasses, you can spot bass swimming around from a considerable distance in clear water. The drop shot lets you plop your lure right before them.

The soft-plastic color pattern maximizes flash and mimics the profile of a lightly colored bait fish swimming downward to get bottom crustaceans, escape the heat, etc.

In most situations, this lets you skip all the guesswork and precisely target the bass.

Recommended Soft-Plastics for Your Drop Shot Rig

For a drop shot, you can use many soft-plastic lures and even experiment with different color schemes to find one that works. 

However, you can’t go wrong with an option built explicitly for it.

Pipkens’ Drop Shot Bait comes in white pearl with black and silver flake. It is made specifically for drop shots and comes in our preferred color pattern for clear water fishing. 

It’s also pretty affordable at about $7 per pack, and they should last quite a while.

4: Huddleston Deluxe 68

Finally, one way to bypass the difficulties of targeting bass that can get a good view of everything you’re using is to use gear that looks 100% realistic. That’s where the Huddleston Deluxe 68 hollow body comes into play.

We do not recommend this to your average weekend warrior using a medium-action spinning rod. These are expensive enough to hurt when you lose them and are big enough to require more specialized setups. 

However, they are unmatched when targeting trophy-sized bass and mimic a real fish down to the most minor details.

Realism

The Huddleston Deluxe 68 mimics a real fish almost perfectly in all its color patterns. It’s a soft-body swimbait designed to look and behave like a real fish. If you’re trying to trick a particularly stubborn bass that’s used to getting hooked every time they bites something bright and fake, this is the right lure to use.

Each lure is also hand-painted. So, you can appreciate the craftsmanship that you get with a Huddleston.

Big Meal for a Big Fish

The Huddleston Deluxe is no lightweight lure. It’s a big swimbait that can feel like you have a fish on the line by itself. 

This can help prevent the smaller juveniles and pesky annoyances from wasting your time on the water, and you can trust that it’s something decent when you start a fight.

Shallow Water Performance

A realistic presentation is even more critical in shallow water since the sunlight is more substantial and makes everything more apparent. 

This is where the Huddleston Deluxe excels. It’s meant to get dragged around weed beds along the banks, docks, etc.

Using the Huddleston Deluxe 68

Using this lure isn’t very difficult, but we recommend taking some precautions.

Of course, a low-visibility line should be used to maximize the presentation's realism in clear water.

However, you should also consider that this isn’t a cheap lure that will be little more than a minor inconvenience if a bass breaks it off or gets stuck in the depths. You’ll be a bit upset if it ends up lost forever.

As such, we always recommend using your best knot or learning a strong knot like the double uni. You do not want to deal with your knot slipping.

We also recommend using a heavier rod than you’d use for most lures. A heavy or super heavy rod with a higher test line is practically a requirement, or you might feel like you’re fighting a smaller fish just by moving your lure around.

Other than that, cast it around the edges of structures without getting tangled up in the thick of it, and you’ll consistently get big bites.

Grab These 4 Top Clear-Water Bass Lures and Start Fishing with BassForecast

These lures for clear-water bass fishing are essential for maximizing success in open, highly visible waters. 

You can find all of them at Tackle Warehouse for competitive prices.

Once they’re in your tackle box, use the BassForecast fishing app to locate the best clear-water fisheries and reel more bass today!