JIRA currently cannot search for colons (:) in text fields or this feature appears to be broken.

Currently, JIRA is unable to search for colons (:) in the text fields of JIRA issues using JQL / simple search.

Double quoting a ':' in a JQL search or escaping it with a back-slash retrieves no results, even if the issues you're searching do have colons in the appropriate text fields.

Using a combination of double quoting and escaping doesn't work either - i.e. "\:"