LED color make a difference in water penetration?

I do a fair amount of bowfishing at night and up until now have used a large incandescent light mounted to my bow. With the drastic improvement in LED technology over the last few years, I'm switching to a new system. What I'm wondering is if anyone has experimented with various LED CRI's to see if one temp is better than another. I know that a throw light will perform better, but not sure if the color of the LED will make much of an impact, or if the color/cloudiness of the water adds another factor into the mix.

Divers know that the first colour to get filtered out as you descend is red, and that blue penetrates to the deepest depth. So it would make sense to apply that to your needs. However I would use pure-as-possible white light myself- it has everything!

I would think it would be the opposite and that blue would be filtered out first; that's what happens at sunset, the shorter blue wavelengths are filtered out and the longer ones come through.

as you descend to the depths the red end of the spectrum disappears first and the blue end last. however that does not mean red does not penetrate at all. i cant remeber if its 5 feet or 5 mtrs or 5 fathoms before red is gone. how deep is your target ?

perhaps you might consider does your quarry have any particular color, match that with your led tint and they will be highlited for you.

cheers

beerwax said:

as you descend to the depths the red end of the spectrum disappears first and the blue end last. however that does not mean red does not penetrate at all. i cant remeber if its 5 feet or 5 mtrs or 5 fathoms before red is gone. how deep is your target ?

perhaps you might consider does your quarry have any particular color, match that with your led tint and they will be highlited for you.

cheers

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Typically we're talking 4 to 5' max. The fish can really vary from very neutral white to gray to greenish to almost reddish-orange.

BTW, thanks for the replies everyone!