Latest Color Research (Bass Vision)

[roadwarrior]

Jeezz...

 

You your favorite color ... They all work!

 

 

 

[Soulfisher]

10 hours ago, jimmyjoe said:

 

   Keep a bow or bow and stern light on all the time. Not bright .... just there. The turn-on and turn-off of the head light are what scare them, not the presence of light by itself. In fact, a light at night will actually attract fish, although I have no idea whether it attracts one specie more than another.      jj

 

21 hours ago, Hammer 4 said:

Use a red lamp..?

Thank you both. Red light was what I was thinking as well and will avoid the sudden shock of light by keeping some lights on. Appreciate your help. 

[Fishingintheweeds]

On 4/30/2018 at 8:47 PM, MIbassyaker said:

So while bass may have trouble distinguishing chartreuse from white all else being equal, in some darker or murkier environments,  a chartreuse lure may still have more intensity than a white lure.

It seems like this is probably what helps reconcile the gap between color seeming to matter and research that shows that certain colors "look" the same to the fish. 

[Rembrandt]

What I'd like to do is have the opportunity to show members how and why the absence of a blue receptor cone in the eyes of a largemouth bass has such a profound effect. 

 

Although commenting about Lisa Mitchem's apparent failure to predict the outcome, I'm not a scientist and am ambivalent about her study.

[Rembrandt]

There have been two important "misses" by bass anglers, professionals and industry players over the last 50 years in relation to colors in the water.

 

Firstly, the accepted norm that the color red fades out first in lake water was debunked by the US Navy 55 years ago and then by science 27 years ago (and many times since). 

 

Yet the fallacy has persisted and caused much confusion in bass angling circles.

 

The second "miss" was the discovery approx 16 years ago that bass eyes do not posses a blue color cone receptor.  Bass are colorblind to the color blue.  That discovery was before Lisa Mitchem's study.

 

The easier subject to address is the no-blue-cone issue and it also is the one that has had an enormous impact on bass anglers.

 

At this link site ? (rapidtables.com) is a list of 129 colors.  Scroll don the page a bit to find the list.

 

These are 129 colors as we humans see them.  They ALL consist of various amounts of Red, Green and Blue colors.  Humans will see each of these as a completely separate color as the mixture component varies.

 

The most well know of these is the color white.  It consists of equal parts of red, green and blue colors.  Mix these 3 colors together and we humans (who have 3 color receptors...red, green AND blue) will see them as the color white.

 

We humans will see those 129 colors exactly as per that webpage because we have 3 color receptor cones.

 

Fine so far.

 

However.....what if we humans had only 2 color receptor cones.  Green and red.  What then? 

 

Would we still see those 129 colors exactly the same as we did in that webpage (when we had 3 color receptor cones)?

 

No we wouldn't because 114 of those colors have a blue component in their RGB color mix. 

 

What about the color white that we talked about previously (when we had 3 color cones)?  It has a blue color in its mix so would we still see white as white with no blue color receptor in our eyes?

 

No we wouldn't.

 

We see that color now as only having equal mixes of red and green with no blue color component. 

 

And what color is made up by equal amounts of red and green (but no blue)?

 

Yellow of course.

 

Lucky for we humans that we aren't in a mess in trying to work out colors with only 2 color receptors.

 

Hang on a minute.  Don't bass only have 2 color receptors? 

 

Yep.  Sure do.

 

So how do they see that color that we saw as white previously (with our 3 cones) with their 2 cones?

 

With only 2 receptors (red and green), do they maybe see it as yellow?

 

Yep.  Right again.

 

The white hasn't changed color.  The bass (with no blue color receptor) just perceive it to be yellow.  We humans still perceive it to be white with our 3 cones.

 

Didn't we say a while ago that there were 129 separate colors on the webpage?

 

So how many of them have a blue component in their mix?

 

114 of them.  So that means that a bass (with 2 color cones) would perceive 114 of those colors differently to the way that we humans (with 3 color receptor cones) would perceive them.

 

Bass don't have a problem with colors.  We humans do 'cos we have to cope with 2 different color worlds.  Ours in a color world governed by 3 color receptors and also in a bass's color world governed by only 2 color receptors.

 

Now can we see the profound significance of the missing blue color receptor cone?

 

Bit more than we thought maybe?

 

Happy to demonstrate how you guys can check this out for yourselves.

 

What we thought was white is actually yellow in a bass's world. 

 

Of these, only 15 have a blue component in their RGB color code mix. 

 

Only colors which don't have any blue compentsBecause of the absence of the blue color cone, there are 

8 minutes ago, Rembrandt said:

There have been two important "misses" by bass anglers, professionals and industry players over the last 50 years in relation to colors in the water.

 

Firstly, the accepted norm that the color red fades out first in lake water was debunked by the US Navy 55 years ago and then by science 27 years ago (and many times since). 

 

Yet the fallacy has persisted and caused much confusion in bass angling circles.

 

The second "miss" was the discovery approx 16 years ago that bass eyes do not posses a blue color cone receptor.  Bass are colorblind to the color blue.  That discovery was before Lisa Mitchem's study.

 

The easier subject to address is the no-blue-cone issue and it also is the one that has had an enormous impact on bass anglers.

 

At this link site ? (rapidtables.com) is a list of 129 colors.  Scroll don the page a bit to find the list.

 

These are 129 colors as we humans see them.  They ALL consist of various amounts of Red, Green and Blue colors.  Humans will see each of these as a completely separate color as the mixture component varies.

 

The most well know of these is the color white.  It consists of equal parts of red, green and blue colors.  Mix these 3 colors together and we humans (who have 3 color receptors...red, green AND blue) will see them as the color white.

 

We humans will see those 129 colors exactly as per that webpage because we have 3 color receptor cones.

 

Fine so far.

 

However.....what if we humans had only 2 color receptor cones.  Green and red.  What then? 

 

Would we still see those 129 colors exactly the same as we did in that webpage (when we had 3 color receptor cones)?

 

No we wouldn't because 114 of those colors have a blue component in their RGB color mix. 

 

What about the color white that we talked about previously (when we had 3 color cones)?  It has a blue color in its mix so would we still see white as white with no blue color receptor in our eyes?

 

No we wouldn't.

 

We see that color now as only having equal mixes of red and green with no blue color component. 

 

And what color is made up by equal amounts of red and green (but no blue)?

 

Yellow of course.

 

Lucky for we humans that we aren't in a mess in trying to work out colors with only 2 color receptors.

 

Hang on a minute.  Don't bass only have 2 color receptors? 

 

Yep.  Sure do.

 

So how do they see that color that we saw as white previously (with our 3 cones) with their 2 cones?

 

With only 2 receptors (red and green), do they maybe see it as yellow?

 

Yep.  Right again.

 

The white hasn't changed color.  The bass (with no blue color receptor) just perceive it to be yellow.  We humans still perceive it to be white with our 3 cones.

 

Didn't we say a while ago that there were 129 separate colors on the webpage?

 

So how many of them have a blue component in their mix?

 

114 of them.  So that means that a bass (with 2 color cones) would perceive 114 of those colors differently to the way that we humans (with 3 color receptor cones) would perceive them.

 

Bass don't have a problem with colors.  We humans do 'cos we have to cope with 2 different color worlds.  Ours in a color world governed by 3 color receptors and also in a bass's color world governed by only 2 color receptors.

 

Now can we see the profound significance of the missing blue color receptor cone?

 

Bit more than we thought maybe?

 

Happy to demonstrate how you guys can check this out for yourselves.

 

What we thought was white is actually yellow in a bass's world. 

 

 

 

[MIbassyaker]

4 hours ago, Rembrandt said:

What everybody seems to have missed in the Lisa Mitchem led study is the significance of bass having no blue-colour receptor.

 

Everybody seems to have picked up on what color receptors a bass eye bass DOES have.  Red and green.  Great.  Lets use red and green lures (over-simplifying a bit to get the point across about the absence of a blue receptor)

 

What has been missed (by all it seems) is the significance of what a bass DOESN'T have. (a blue cone).

 

Despite her being aware of the absence of the blue cone, Lisa Mitchem seemed not to understand the significance of it either.  Otherwise she wouldn't have persisted in using blue, black, white, yellow etc in her attempts to train bass to see certain colors. 

 

She'd have realized that while she thought she was training a bass to seek out white she was actually training it to seek out yellow.  Ditto with black and blue colors.  There are other combination examples.

 

The results of her study about some confusion/mistakes by bass in picking out various colors was (and still is) entirely and accurately predictable before she started her 2017 study.

 

The absence of a blue cone will do zip as far as red, green or any other color that doesn't have a blue component in its RGB mix.  eg orange, yellow, black, brown, olive, maroon...etc)

 

But it has a profound effect on any color that does have a blue component in its RGB mix.  eg blue, white, pink, azure, purple, cream, violet, beige to name but a few affected.

 

You're overstating this.  The results were not entirely predictable -- rather, they were within a reasonable range of expectations given prior findings pointing to a two-cone visual system, and given the model of cone sensitivity they fit to the absorption data. 

 

(for anybody following along, the article again is here: https://academic.oup.com/cz/article/65/1/43/4924236 )

 

Cone responses are not categorical, but graded, with peak sensitivity to particular wavelengths. for any particular wavelength you get a degree of response out of all cones (provided it is intense enough), and the degree of response simply varies between the cones according to how close it is to the peak. Thus, we do not have really have "Blue", "Green" and "Red" cones, and using those names as shorthand is misleading -- the three cones just have peaks at different parts of the visible range, and the perception of any color depends on a distribution of responses across all three.

 

If you want to know whether a bass distinguishes any two particular colored stimuli, you need to first know what the distribution of wavelength reflectances are of the stimuli. Then you need to know what the response curves of the cones are. You can measure stimulus reflectance more or less directly. That's shown in their Figure 2.  But the response curve of the cones cannot be directly determined in the same way -- must be modeled from much noisier observations of the light absorption in the photoreceptive cells. This is what's shown in figure 3.  Then the model must be tested.  A model could fit the absorption data reasonably well, and still be wrong.

 

The point of using confusable colors in the study was to test that model in terms of its behavioral consequences.   If they found bass could distinguish blue vs. black and white vs. yellow as well as green vs. red, that would have falsified one or more assumptions of the model.  It is notable that it didn't -- the results are basically in-line with with the model of the 2-cone system. But there was no absolute guarantee it would come out this way.

 

And, as the authors point out, some aspects of the results are not anticipated by the model, such as the blue and black confusions when trained on White and Yellow (Look at figure 4, exp. 2, panels E and F).  The model doesn't quite accommodate this without some additional assumptions -- a plausible explanation consistent with the model is that bass attach more meaning to hue differences than intensity differences -- in the 2-cone model, white, yellow blue and black differences exist only in intensity; essentially the same as grayscale.

 

I see nothing here to indicate the authors "missed" anything about the significance of the having no cone with peak sensitivity in the "blue" range. On the contrary -- they have been careful to not to overgeneralize and overstate implications.

 

1 hour ago, Rembrandt said:

Firstly, the accepted norm that the color red fades out first in lake water was debunked by the US Navy 55 years ago and then by science 27 years ago (and many times since).

 

Well, this is really just because of oversimplification.  As light travels through water, long wavelengths are absorbed before shorter wavelengths, so all else equal, in clear water red fades to black first as you descend then gradually the others follow. This is true and well-understood. But natural waterbodies also have dissolved or suspended matter (e.g., algae, soils, tannins, etc.) that reduce clarity and stain the water, adjusting the absorption profile. In really muddy water for instance, red may end up penetrating the furthest because all the stuff in the water absorbs the other wavelengths even faster.

 

1 hour ago, Rembrandt said:

What about the color white that we talked about previously (when we had 3 color cones)?  It has a blue color in its mix so would we still see white as white with no blue color receptor in our eyes?

 

No we wouldn't.

 

We see that color now as only having equal mixes of red and green with no blue color component. 

 

And what color is made up by equal amounts of red and green (but no blue)?

 

Yellow of course.

 

Lucky for we humans that we aren't in a mess in trying to work out colors with only 2 color receptors.

 

Hang on a minute.  Don't bass only have 2 color receptors? 

 

Yep.  Sure do.

 

So how do they see that color that we saw as white previously (with our 3 cones) with their 2 cones?

 

With only 2 receptors (red and green), do they maybe see it as yellow?

 

Yep.  Right again.

 

 

This is basically right, although technically we don't have any basis to infer what they see it as ...it would be just as accurate to say they see yellow as white, since the both inputs result in the same distribution of cone responses.  A more accurate way to describe this would be that what we see as yellow and white are perceptually indistinguishable to bass.

[Biglittle8]

This is one of the most interesting discussions I've seen in a while on this topic... Thanks to the O/P!

[MIbassyaker]

3 hours ago, Fishingintheweeds said:

It seems like this is probably what helps reconcile the gap between color seeming to matter and research that shows that certain colors "look" the same to the fish. 

 

Possibly.  Experiments like this control for intensity differences (bright vs. dark) in order to test for a causal effect of the color factor itself.  But your lures were not created to be part of an experimental manipulation. When you're out on the water and you swap the white crankbait for the chartreuse one, you're never just changing the color and nothing else.

[OkobojiEagle]

If I accept the above to be accurate, am I right to believe that "our" colors yellow and white still differ to some degree in hue or vibrancy to the bass?

 

oe

[J Francho]

Cones aren't really distinguished by red, blue, and green.  Each type is optimized for a range of wavelength.  A better way to put this would be to term them as short, medium, and long.  There's some over lap.  A lot of this discussion is based on the assumption that all red cones are the same, all blue cones are the same, etc.  This isn't the case.  A bass's vision evolved to optimize seeing what it needs to see to survive.  To assume that something blue cannot be distinguished or call bass colorblind blue is probably a small leap, and too cut and dry/black and white.  What is true: their cones are different than ours. 

 

I'll keep tossing blue jigs, while this gets debated.

[the reel ess]

So the pretty "sapphire" specks in my jig trailers are just for me to admire and I could either go all blue or all black if I desired.

[J Francho]

Not if it matches your purse. ?

[Rembrandt]

11 hours ago, Rembrandt said:

There is a big difference between simplifying and complicating.

Neither over-simplifying nor over-complicating a topic serves anybody's interests.  But one can't be dismissed at the expense of the other.

 

Fishermen want to fish and dont have a lot of interest in whether blue is actually a wavelength of 442 nm , 443nm or 444nm.  To them, all 3 are blue.

 

Nor are they really interested in whether something has maximum spectral sensitivity at 442nm, 535nm or 700nm.  They only want to know if its blue, green or red. 

 

Science is study by increments.  Color in fishing is the art of "broadbrush".

 

So where is the balance between the science and the art?  The balance between jargon of increments and fishing jargon?   The science which is of most interest to the fewest and the art which is of most interest to the majority.

 

Where is the bridge between the science and the art?  It should be somewhere between the two extremes but it certainly hasn't been evident for a lot of years.  Thus confusion among the majority has been the order of the day.

 

My view is that in fishing circles, science has not assisted the fishing community. 

 

Science language is one used in conversation with other scientists.  Conversation involving science is constructed for its audience (mostly for peer review purposes).  Clever conversation.

 

Conversation involving fishing follows similar construction but is practical conversation not clever.

 

So, how does one construct a bridge between the two?

 

Pull the clever scientific audience conversations towards the other?  Or educate the "other" in science?

 

There's been plenty of opportunity for the former over the years but the fishing community has relied more and more on experiences gained rather than being educated.

 

One might say that the fishing community has learned and advanced from its own experiences in spite of science and not because of it.

 

I'm happy to try and find that bridge in a modest way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So in bass fishing circles, where is the "bridge" between science and practicality?  

 

11 hours ago, Rembrandt said:

Bass anglers don't really want to know about whether 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rembrandt]

This thread is about research into colors by Lisa Mitchem and training LMB to recognize specific colors.

 

Its NOT what I was looking for and to persist would be tantamount to hijacking.

 

I'll start a more appropriate one as a technical approach to fishing.  To act as that bridge making for more easily understood intercourse of technical information not reliant on opinion or experience.

 

I'm having a lot of difficulty working my way around this site.  It doesn't seem intuitive and simply contributing something involves a suck-it-and-see approach.  If I get it wrong, I can't find how to unpick the error.

 

Maybe its just me.  

 

Maybe its the need for everything I write to be approved by a moderator.

 

Can somebody tell me if that need is only a temporary one or if it happens to ALL posts.

[J Francho]

New members' posts are subject to automatic moderation. Certain types of content triggers it as well, as does replying to new members' content. It's how we reduce spam. You'll see very little here, and that's because we have robust software and work hard to avoid that distraction. 
 

The forum rules and faq are a link at the top. If you are on a mobile device, hit the hamburger and tap the link to them. Read through, and many of your questions will be answered. There is a link to the forum software help as well. 

[Glenn]

Separately, it's important to note this is a recreational fishing site.  So the opinions and experience of members here are important and informative as it relates to the enjoyment of the sport.

 

Along those lines, how's the smallmouth bass fishing in Brisbane these days?

 

[schplurg]

5 hours ago, Rembrandt said:

 

So in bass fishing circles, where is the "bridge" between science and practicality?  

 

 

 

 

The span is great. Skepticism and science is lacking in the general population. Fishing? The Brooklyn Bridge is sold to anglers every day.

[txchaser]

I wonder how closely the blue wavelength blocker glasses would approximate what a bass sees. I'm really interested to see if there's enough in the hue differences of (for example) black and blue for it to be visible. 

[Deleted account]

A guy named Rembrandt plops down and wants to "modestly" take the art and experience out of color and make it more scientific, Are Picassos his favorite lures? is it just me?...

Oh yes please Master, teach me something....