But how are they going to see it?

[GorillaBass]

Sup guys ..

So as I'm learning and getting better at fishing.. not tooting my horn, but much better, thanks to my research, this site, and a few good friends showing me the ropes.. or my countless hours on the resevoir trying tried and true and ...absolutely stupid stuff just to see if it works?

anyway..

I try to think like a fish.

I have two fishfinders, great technology. I see TONS of great structure, I see TONS of 'fish' activity below me, so naturally i'm changing my tactics a bit to try to catch those deeper fish.. try..yeah, I said try.

 

So. My question. say... 10-20 feet+, I see great activity, likely deep suspending fish, on my way to buy a crankbait rod/reel combo as I learned.. I kinda like crankbaiting and for some reason I get great results.

The question: If the water is dark, after 3+ft .. and the bait, so a worm, jig, ect doesn't rattle.. how the hell are the bass supposed to see it? Can they see even if we cant? is it different when youre in the water? how would a deep worm in low vis catch a fish? something has to make noise, vibrate, what have you in order to attract them..

 

Why do I ask? so my arsenal of lures can be tailored around vibration, rather worms, jigs, ect .. remember, low visibility were talking

 

thanks for any and all advice.. you bro's help a lot.. some of you are kind of rude, but hey, w/e

[12poundbass]

Their lateral line. They feel it.

[GorillaBass]

say a floating worm though.. so a drop shot worm, a jig popping, they can feel that??

[Team9nine]

Yep, every lure displaces a certain amount of water, some more than others, but fish can pick up (feel) that displacement and locate the source if given enough time, along with using any visual or auditory aids also.

[GorillaBass]

wow.. thats crazy .. like, a worm just floats .. weird to think a bass will know it's there

[Preytorien]

Yep, you'd be surprised at how well they can hone in on a lure, even in chocolate milk water. I've thrown some lures I didn't have much confidence in getting bit, and whaddya know they light it up. Like most predators their initial targeting sense is visual, but when the water is cloudy they rely heavily on their lateral line. That said, their eyesight is developed enough that even in water we consider dirty they can see pretty good, after all that's their environment, so even stained water will see the bass using visual cues to target food. 

[WRB]

Stop and think for a minute and ask yourself how can a bass find it's prey? The small bait fish are camouflage to help them hide, they don't make any audible sounds and the bass can find them at night! If a bass can't find food it starves.

Study bass behavior and learn about thier sensory ability, how they see, hear, feel and taste. Bass have big eyes located near the top of thier head, nostrils to detect odors at the front of the head, lateral line nerves exposed along the lateral line via pore scales making both side sensitive to water pressure waves similar to sound waves. Bass use all their senses to detect prey.

Tom

[Raul]

The very first bass I caught in my life was by jerking a Rapala Original floating minnow in a pond where the water had like an inch of visibility, it was so muddy the lure was literally plowing the water.

 

So ---> Bass DON'T NEED TO SEE THE BAIT, in order to find it.

[NCbassraider]

The Ned rig is a perfect example.  It is a winner in deep, dark water and barely wiggles.

[Tony L.]

The lateral line, for sure, just like everyone else has said. Also keep visual perspective in mind. You are looking down at your lure against the backdrop of the lake bottom. A suspending bass might very easily be seeing your lure from below, in which case it is silhouetted against the light of the sun, and a lot easier to see.

[TOXIC]

The more of a bass' senses you can trigger the better.  In low visibility conditions only one is eliminated....sight.  They can still Feel the bait (lateral line), Hear the bait (rattles) and Smell/Taste the bait (scents).  Bass have to eat or they die...period.  Once 1 feeding method is removed, they rely on the others.  

 

That's assuming that what you are seeing on your graphs are actually bass  Another fact to keep in mind is that "usually" muddy water will push bass shallow.  

[Deleted account]

I once found myself fishing some ponds that had zero vis, they looked like someone had poured a cup of coffee with 2 creamers into a bowl of pea soup and stirred it around. All I had was a spinning rod and a pack of watermelon trick worms. I assumed I had to make as much of a ruckus as I could with the lure to have a chance. After about an hour or so of that without a bite, I casted out and started a conversation with someone who happened to come by. So I close the bail, and I'm just holding the rod, not facing the pond when like 10 seconds latter, I felt an unmistakeable bite. I assumed it was a fluke, and I had hit one on the head, but had to try to replicate it, so to make a long story short (too late) I caught several nice bass doing this for the next 2 hours or so. I don't know how these fish detected this subtle slowly falling lure, but they did. Always pays to think outside the box, and keep in mind that bass don't read.

[Choporoz]

On 10/3/2017 at 12:08 PM, GorillaBass said:

 Can they see even if we cant?

That's a good question....not sure we're ever going to know for certain.  Just like the color arguments.  Until we get a hold of a talking bass, we are only going to be guessing at what a bass sees.  My guess is that a bass can probably see better in any water condition than you and I can.

[MIbassyaker]

Light is absorbed by water, but it penetrates deeper than you can see. The limit of depth you can see is actually the limit of distance light can travel down into the water and back before it is all absorbed. If you can see 6 feet down, for instance, that means you are seeing light that penetrates into the water 6 feet, and is reflected BACK through 6 more feet of water to your eyes.  Even if the limit of visibility was 6 feet, light would still reach a bass 8 feet down...it just may not reach back to your eyes when reflected off the bass. 

[J Francho]

Simply put, a bass has bass eyes.  You have human eyes.  They aren't the same.

[GorillaBass]

Man ... i'm glad I asked, you guys know your stuff. Thanks to all who responded to me, thats really cool I can get such quality answers for such a question. I'm still a rookie, I read a lot on here but that question i've been pondering in my head for several months know.

 

That lateral line, removing one sense so they rely on others, the light, their environment, I get it now, it's a combination of everything, a jiggling worm in their area.. they'll know. Which makes me feel so much better !! haha

 

Now.. I got (almost) skunked 3 days in a row fishing the resevoir (I go a lot, i'm sure you guys seen me) , I caught a little guy on my crank on the way out in the marina by lake ridge, despite that? nothing ! .. god I suck, some days I slay though, WHERE DO THE 5LBERS HANG OUT AT ?!

[pondbassin101]

4 minutes ago, GorillaBass said:

WHERE DO THE 5LBERS HANG OUT AT ?!

The kind of places that they know you won't find them 

[GorillaBass]

29 minutes ago, pondbassin101 said:

The kind of places that they know you won't find them 

well said !!!   .. so, I try to "scan" an area with my two fish finders before I fish somewhere, if I can- I feel like if it looks like somethings there, even if it gives me mixed feelings then it's worth it- sometimes I go over an area and theres nothing and despite it looking like a good spot, I don't fish it. 

 

anyone else use their electronics to their favor?

[J Francho]

Electronics just help me paint a mental picture of what's under the boat. I'm a structure guy, and I don't care if I don't see fish. So often, I find the right stuff, and low and behold, I will watch them literally come out of nowhere, to my bait, and it's on. 

 

To answer an earlier question, fish deeper and slower than you usually fish to find the big girls. It sounds general, but it's true. 

[GorillaBass]

Just now, J Francho said:

Electronics just help me paint a mental picture of what's under the boat. I'm a structure guy, and I don't care if I don't see fish. So often, I find the right stuff, and low and behold, I will watch them literally come out of nowhere, to my bait, and it's on. 

 

To answer and earlier question, dish deeper and slower than you usually fish to find the big girls. It sounds general, but it's true. 

yeah- I agree man, like I want to make the most out of my electronics, and it's likely why I feel like I 'need' to do that, but I'm a technical guy, in my job and life- I try not to think about it too much but try to 'swing' it in my favor.

 

the big girls are a little deeper huh? I always felt that way, I dont see a 5lb or heavy bass chillen by the weeds on my resevoir in 2-3ft of water, all the big ones always came in the ~7-8 to like 10/15ft

[J Francho]

There's always some big fish shallow, but by and large, outside of a a few seasonal windows there are more, bigger fish deeper.

[slonezp]

You'd be surprised how deep light can penetrate the water. Clear calm water, blue skies, midday sun, light penetration could potentially reach 500ft or more. 20-30ft deep is nothing. Water clarity, waves, and angle of the sun all play a role. I have read studies by walleye fisherman that chartreuse is the only color walleye can pick up under low light conditions in depths greater than 20ft. I fish for smallmouth in Sturgeon Bay in areas where I can see the bottom in 30ft of water in bright skies. Same water where guys regularly fish 90 to 200ft of water for salmon. And what about deep sea fishing? Sometimes we forget there are more species of fish than just bass and there are more types of water than just the ones we frequent.    

[Catt]

2 hours ago, J Francho said:

There's always some big fish shallow, but by and large, outside of a a few seasonal windows there are more, bigger fish deeper.

 

Back in the 70s when I started tournament fishing heavily I had an old guide on Toledo Bend tell me, "for every bass you catch near the bank there's 5 behind you waiting to be caught."

[RPreeb]

1 hour ago, slonezp said:

You'd be surprised how deep light can penetrate the water. Clear calm water, blue skies, midday sun, light penetration could potentially reach 500ft or more. 20-30ft deep is nothing. Water clarity, waves, and angle of the sun all play a role. I have read studies by walleye fisherman that chartreuse is the only color walleye can pick up under low light conditions in depths greater than 20ft. I fish for smallmouth in Sturgeon Bay in areas where I can see the bottom in 30ft of water in bright skies. Same water where guys regularly fish 90 to 200ft of water for salmon. And what about deep sea fishing? Sometimes we forget there are more species of fish than just bass and there are more types of water than just the ones we frequent.    

The visible spectrum is lost by wavelength as you go deeper, starting with the red end (longest wavelengths), with blue penetrating the farthest, extending as deep as 600 meters in very clear water.  Red can be lost in as little as 35 feet even under good conditions in the ocean.  This is why I don't feel that color is as important as shade... light and dark shades of colors are probably more telling than the color itself.

 

This photo that I took in 1990 at Little Cayman is in about 35 feet of water.  You can see the color brought out by my strobe, but the light of that fairly powerful Nikonos strobe didn't carry much farther than 6 feet, and everything beyond that is just blue and green.  The only noticeable colors you see are quite close to the light source.  Those objects showed no color before the strobe flashed.  Scuba divers often carry a small light with them even on daytime dives to see the real colors on the reef.  

 

[slonezp]

9 minutes ago, RPreeb said:

The visible spectrum is lost by wavelength as you go deeper, starting with the red end (longest wavelengths), with blue penetrating the farthest, extending as deep as 600 meters in very clear water.  Red can be lost in as little as 35 feet even under good conditions in the ocean.  This is why I don't feel that color is as important as shade... light and dark shades of colors are probably more telling than the color itself.

 

This photo that I took in 1990 at Little Cayman is in about 35 feet of water.  You can see the color brought out by my strobe, but the light of that fairly powerful Nikonos strobe didn't carry much farther than 6 feet, and everything beyond that is just blue and green.  The only noticeable colors you see are quite close to the light source.  Those objects showed no color before the strobe flashed.  Scuba divers often carry a small light with them even on daytime dives to see the real colors on the reef.  

 

I'm no marine biologist but I would take a guess that a fishes eyesight is better underwater than a humans. As far as color is concerned, I would agree with you about red only because of the walleye studies I previously mentioned. When I chase low light deep water walleye, lets say deeper than 25 feet, specifically from the Wisconsin River system which is stained, and normal visibility around 4ft ,  I tend to use 6" dark plastic grubs impregnated with glitter. If I'm chasing them in less than 15ft, I'll use chartreuse. During the daylight the fish tend to hold in 16-19ft and white jigheads tipped with Gulp or minnows is the ticket. I mention again, we forget there are other species of fish with very different behaviors yet their habits are similar.