Episode 1: Vision

all right all right so we don't know what we're doing here this is very informal my name is Corbin Healy I'm Sam Huckabee and we're talking about science behind largemouth bass fishing so I guess for some context a little bit about who we are we are both from Kansas City, Missouri we've known each other since first grade at least and have been avid bass anglers for probably the past 15 years or so I remember really getting into it when I was in middle school and kind of gone from there we are both professionals I guess I'm an attorney Sam's a dentist and so we are constricted to you know we're not proficient by any means but we do have a lot of time on the water both regionally and around the country and so the thought was to spend some time researching about what we do and to try to take a more scientific approach towards what we do Sam and I noticed that so much of the fishing industry is plagued and consumed by really good marketing and advertising so much which is what I mean I'm certainly a sucker for it as I think we all are but in all the years that we've spent and all the time that we spent fishing I a lot of times don't know the why behind a lot of things we do yeah and so we are trying to record a number of episodes that are dedicated to better understanding the fish and better understanding yeah the why the why you know like why are we doing so and so things you know what's the research that backs it is their research that backs it right because I feel like a lot of these things that we're going to look at and dive into even a little bit today like the research is not there yet on a lot of these things and they're being sold like there is a ton of research back in them and that's what the media portrays and that's what all the large corporations are trying to portray for sure that you buy and buy and buy and try new things and for sure different things so well so the first topic that we are going to dive into and I don't know how long these episodes are going to be but the first thing we wanted to get into was vision and more particularly I think we kind of divided the workload so I spent a lot of time on large-mouth bass perception of color and their interest to particular colors whereas I think Sam you spent correct me if I'm wrong more time on like distance yeah site and the depth of water how that impacts visibility in hunting patterns is that right yeah yeah very much so I mean and they're just so many of the things that go into this you know like clarity of the water you know sunlight like all these different things try to you know research as best we could with what's out there and what's available and just to see you know how different circumstances or you know different days on the water with you know in terms of sunlight or you know what water bottle you're gonna have clear the water is you know to know what you should be throwing or why you should be throwing certain types of things sure so before we dive into color I guess there's a little bit of just to context wise like I said we're both from Kansas City so a lot of our fishing is going to be around the Midwest a lot of our experience and that what has taught us to become the anglers that we are has been influenced by the fact that we are from the Midwest so we're obviously fishing lots of local lakes around the Kansas City area but the bigger more well-known lakes that we fish are going to be your Ozarks table rock Truman and then we've also spent a decent amount of time traveling to different lakes around Texas hunting for largemouth and then also going up north for smallmouth and for also even walleye pike musky and so on and so that influences I guess a little bit about what our confidence is in now and that might sway us in how we research particular things sure this impossible to take out the bias you know fully behind everything but that's I think what Corbin and I are really kind of good at with the professions that we're in is really looking at research and being able to decide was it well done are the methods to these research you know projects done well and if you know everything we bring you we will try to do with at least amount of biases we can and lead you to good research sure so let's start off with color which is what I research right yeah so if you're anything like me my jig box is composed of 15 different colors 15 different variations of colors now they're going to be you know a green kind of base a brown kind of base a black kind of base and so on but different variations of that same with my crankbait box same with my swim jig box chatterbait box I've got all of these different colors and slight variations of colors for what I think I am fine tuning in the moment come to find out think a lot of that is nonsensical so it all kind of started my understanding of this is that there was a study that was conducted in 1937 by a guy named Frank a brown junior and he wrote for the Illinois National Historical Survey a article for research article called responses of the large mouth black bass the colors and in that study he placed small some type of device electrode or something on large mouth bass that would actually shock them based off of their response to given colors their pursuit of different colors well that was in 1937 so in 2018 the Department of Animal Biology in School of Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois conducted a color that was very very similar to Brown's study and their study was called seeing red color vision in large mouth bass and I have to give credit to other people that I've used to research this particularly some YouTube channels Tom Reddington's channel Steve Rogers outdoors window fishing and one cast fishing I they had videos that interpreted these studies that helped me kind of better understand what was going on so let's talk about the goals of the study to begin with okay so there were two primary goals of this 2018 study the first was to characterize the visual system of large mouth bass and determine whether or not the visual systems differentiated in large mouth bass between between different strains okay so for the study they used a strain of Illinois large mouth yeah and a Florida strain of black that was the first goal the second goal was to determine which colors bass could discriminate and whether this match the predictions from a model that was created using their estimates of bass photoreceptors and spectral sensitivities okay so let's talk a little bit about how they did this so they took 100 juvenile large mouth bass and they obtained them from a local hatchery and they kept them in a naturally lit greenhouse okay they were trained once a day for 69 days okay and they were trained to discern their target from all other targets presented simultaneously so for example bass were trained to approach red had to discern red from blue from black from green from white and from shark truce yellow those are the colors that they use red blue black green white and shark truce and they would want them to go to the red every time well not necessarily so what they would do is they would differentiate the tank based off of which color they were trying to train bass to pursue okay there was red tank okay blue tank green tank each tank had a different goal target color and they these target colors were essentially a acrylic panels okay and what they would do is they were pipettes that were connected to the colored panels that would release food and that is how they would incentivize the fish target a particular color so after two weeks bass were required to strike their designated training target to receive that reward okay and all of the tanks were successful in training the bass every single color okay and so tanks were considered to be trained when all of the bass in a given tank struck at the pipette for three consecutive days and they did this for like I said 70 days okay so let's go back a little bit to the first goal which was to differentiate to understand how bass see into it was more of a study into the biology or to the physical aspect of the bass so they actually dissected bass to understand how their eyes worked all right and this is what they discovered this might seem obvious but they discovered that there was no differentiation between an Illinois strain bass and a Florida strain bass and how they see so what the structure of their eye in the structure of their right in the structure of their right this is not talking about water color this is just structure of the right right and what they essentially got to the bottom of is that bass have what is called dichromatic vision okay yeah so in humans we have trichromatic vision okay so our eyes can see a spectrum of red colors a spectrum of green colors and a spectrum of blue colors and all of those spectrums can overlap in different ways which allow us to see the variation of colors that we do bass only have two of those cones okay they only have red and green right bass do not have that blue cone so that takes out a huge spectrum of what bass can and cannot see all right so that's what they on that's that was kind of the physical part and the physical goal of the study that they were able to determine all right so the question now becomes okay why do I care why do I care about whether or not they have these different cones what I care about as an angler is what can they see and what can they not see right right so this is where things get really interesting in my opinion all right so they they ran three experiments okay the first experiment was discerning the training targets from their alternatives in the presence of a chemical cue which is their food an olfactory experiment to was to discern was the exact same minus the chemical cue so you're still asking the fish to pursue a particular target but you're not rewarding them with food and you're not giving scent to the color that you're wanting them to pursue right interesting so you know what would cause them to want to go to that exactly right exactly well they've been trained for 70 days that if I go towards this color I'm going to get food right and it worked in every tank like fish work they were able to train the fish success we do it for doing that experiment three is even more interesting in my opinion it was in the absence of scent discerning color cues from a chromatic stimuli now what that means an acromatic stimuli is essentially just a gray card acromatic there's no color but it's great so what you can do is like if I took a shade of bright orange right yeah it it it you can study how much light reflects off of bright orange right there's a yeah they they can actually figure that like there's a numerical value to how much light reflects off of bright orange okay well they can replicate that same reflection with a gray like with a shade of gray an acromatic card right so you could have a gray card and an orange card and the amount of light that is bouncing off of those are the same in other words for an animal that is say color blind it would look the exact same okay I say same so let's let's go back to that first study so the results of the first study which discerning but one from six different colors with the presence of a chemical cue all right so when they're when they had the chemical cue present this is the success rates that the fish were able to differentiate between other colors okay with scent wait so they were having differentiate against other colors only one colors in the tank with them no for the multiple different colors all six colors were in the tank were in the tank and they had to pick the right one and by the way every day they would reorganize the positioning of those cards in the tank okay so that's the fish the fish are not trained like hey I'm gonna go left or I'm gonna get the second from the right it's truly I need to go after this color to get food for 70 days and they did it okay okay so with scent yeah the color red they were able to successfully go towards it 81.5% of the time seems pretty high green 72.8 blue 65 black 66 yellow 61 and white 57 okay interesting why so far down there okay but here's here's where you get really interesting now let's take the scent out of it just visual cues alone okay red went up 85.4% wow green stayed the same 72.3% blue went from 65 to 48 black actually went up so from 66 to 70 that's yellow this is where it gets really interesting though okay and by the way when I say yellow it's shark truce okay so shark truce went from 66 with scent to 45 and then white went from 57 with scent to 33 but here's where you get really interesting okay so I'm gonna read those again and I'm the first number I read is gonna be with scent the second number I'm gonna read is without scent okay so red went from 81 to 85 green went from 72 to 72 blue went from 65 to 48 black went from 66 to 70 yellow went from 61 to 45 and white went from 57 to 33 okay but what's interesting is that when you see the significant decreases in success rates for colors like blue yellow and white you wonder well what colors did they go after alternative right yeah good point came forgot those other colors right so a fish that was originally trained from blue to go to blue and that was performing at a 65% success rate that went down to 48 was confusing blue and black at almost a 50 50% rate wow blue and black were interchangeable when the fish went from being trained to go to black without scent it was now going to blue about 30% of the time okay even more so is the white and shark truce right when a fish was trained to go to shark truce it was only successfully doing it with without scent 45% of the time the other 55% of the time it was going either to white or to blue see I find that super interesting because you like just from previous knowledge before I've you know heard you talk about this study is you hear white and shark truce are the same to fish they are is what I've you know you was what you hear over industry standards you know it was like you might as well put shark truce on it just to brighten up the tails not because they see the shark truce it's just a brighter chrome or you know a brighter hue you're exactly right you're exactly right I find that interesting that that study shows the same well when you in the last part of it is when a fish was trained to go to white right it went from with scent at 50 57% to 33 it was seeing it was chasing white in shark truce at almost equal rates a third of the time good to know right and so what that tells me as an angler is first of all I don't care about having a yellow stripe going down my white crankbait I don't care right you're gonna see the same thing I don't care about having a white spinnerbait and a white with a shark tree stripe spinnerbait and a shark tree spinnerbait you need one right yeah you can limit your box limit your box right you can have just fewer things I find that interesting though also in the sense of like you hear all the time oh you know don't put your lure in the water without paint the tail you know shark truce you know like is that you know partially some of that scent that garlic scent well I'll get to that here you know it isn't just like the whiteness of it can such a dark water I'll get to that in a second so so what's interesting let me let me read some of the language of this study okay talking specifically about white and shark truce okay our visual detection model of bass vision indicate indicated that dichromatic bass vision limits the perception of yellow coloration park in particular shark truce yellow should appear similar to white this happens because shark truce yellow equally stimulates both the green and red cone cells at familiar frequencies hence there is no occupancy or a ponancy I don't I'm the weird word for them to use in the study resulting from shark truce yellow in trials with old factory cues with scent yeah bass trained shark truce yellow and white could correctly identify their target colors yet even here they often made mistakes and frequently chose the other this pattern was amplified when the bass were tested in the absence of sin okay so there's a couple things to learn there right the biggest and most glaring one to me and this will be a completely separate episode that I think you and I should do is how significant scent place right these fish went from a success rate of over almost 60% down to 30% right or from 60% down to 45 or from 65 down to 48 and they were able to differentiate well differentiate colors that would seemingly be identical like black and blue black and blue because they're following the because they're following the same right right I mean that just tells me wow you know that that is crazy right now how much did they say anything in the study about humps because they're sort of putting food in the pipettes yeah can the bass see the food in the pipette my understanding of it is that the food would be placed would would be hidden behind the panel color okay and so the fish would have to quote unquote strike the panel but in reality they just had to nudge it they had to get close to it like there was a certain distance that if they got so close they would consider that kind of a strike okay right okay they're not actually swiping out so it truly is sent and sight of color that's they did that well the right exactly right now what is also kind of the cherry on top of all this is the red and the green situation right so obviously one of the big takeaways here is that bass are keenly capable of identifying red as it is perceived by humans in green as it is perceived by humans now the third experiment which I mentioned confirms this okay so even when bass were presented with one two three four five six seven other non chromatic acromatic stimuli aka grave shades yeah they were still choosing red and green at almost a 50% success rate okay so it definitely has to have a play like coloration wise you know I mean that you think you know obviously industry standards throw your green pumpkin you know well there's definitely something to that there's a lot going on with this okay so here's here's where I think that this matters to the average angler okay you're never going to be able to convince me to abandon the concept of matching the hatch right right because no matter how a bass views a shad or a gill or a crawl compared to how human see it when you match or emulate that color you're going to be replicating what the bass see yeah okay what they're feeding on right exactly right now but where this does make a difference to me is that when I'm out on the water and I'm meeting something I'm needing to change I'm wanting to try something different right I'm not going to go from a black jig to a black and blue jig I am not going to go from a white lure to white and chartreuse or from white to chartreuse what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go from white to black or I'm gonna go from white to red right or from red to green right or when I'm throwing a jig instead of putting I mean think about how many guys you see on YouTube who do the I like my jigs ugly right I want I don't match the trailer to the jig I personally was like oh I like my shit to look the same right I'm done with that I'm done with that because it shows me that bass can differentiate particular colors right and that's important to them right yeah I'll tell you something I did this summer that I was I had never done before you know a lot of was take a very bright black and blue jig like the blue is very bright on it and stick a green pumpkin trailer on it every time I went out right you know just to see because I would always stick something dark on the back of that and I had a lot of successes some are doing that you know I'm just just trying something new in the coloration very color variation right you know that a lot of times people you know look down upon because it's not matching the color the other thing that this study tells me is that I'm gonna be throwing red a lot more this year yeah I'm gonna be using it think about I'm gonna I need to buy another red marker and what I mean why not because it you're telling me now that that is the bet that is the color that they see the best right they can differentiate from everything that it will light up like a Christmas tree why would I not use that in almost every situation right and did they look at any coloration color variation of red at all is it straight like a bright red so the experiment was just with the six handled acrylic cards however I did watch some videos or read something somewhere that talked about how because fish can see the red spectrum that other red huge colors will still pop and Sam think about this this makes a lot of sense think of some of the most successful colors ever made in bass fishing red chat red bug June bug black and red flake California 420 watermelon red think about all the fire and chili cross right think about morning dawn boom boom right yeah it all makes sense okay just super super interesting stuff there's more to this as well right let me think where I was going next with this I will say you know one of the favorite drop shot you know colors on table rock is your pink is your pink you know I mean this pink as you can get it you know that oh the other thing that I read and I don't know if it was in this study or not but obviously a big selection for coloration for me is gonna be water clarity yes that that's like your that's how you choose right go out right so in the Midwest we don't have we actually have clear lakes then a lot of places around the country compared to like say down south yeah very very rock even Ozarks can be really clean Truman runs tins run a little dirtier but around here and up north and you're going to a pretty clear water yeah yeah yeah you always hear you know in murky water you want to do either really dark or really bright which I think is true yeah but they said that even in high polluted water in in water that is densely filled with sediment that your best color is going to be red because they can still they can differentiate that better even in murky or water well then they can from something bright or dark isn't that interesting so wild so it's because it's because in muddy water their ability to differentiate red is still going to be better than it is from differentiating black or even white yeah but then you think about like just the sheer brightness of it like a light reflect contrast contrast off of it totally agree you know it's like how does a white lure not look brighter than a red but maybe it's not maybe the importance is not how bright it is maybe it's about just pure attraction what they can see and and I think that I completely agree I can go and so something that's interesting that a lot of these guys on YouTube did that I mentioned is there are color blind simulators online right we've all seen the dots with all the numbers in them they test you yeah well there are simulators online that you can get in an upload photos that you take now one of the color blindness that humans actually have is called what is it triton tritonopia it's blue blind it's like bass they take the you don't have the blue cone so I went ahead and uploaded some images into it of different crankbaits in different colors ensure shit they're spot on I don't know if I can put this in the video or whatever but like left is normal and right is not and you can already see that like okay let's take this bit right here right that's right chartreuse when you come over here why it's just white right and it would also tells you I think the reds look at the reds up and out right look the same and but it would also tells me is that all these little variations between all these brown cross and all these different chartreuses and crumbs doesn't matter shading it's just tiny little shading it doesn't really make a difference at all that interesting that's a very interesting so yeah so the other study that I looked at was I think less exciting but still somewhat informative and kind of makes sense all right so this was a study that was done from up in Canada the Department of Biology in Carlton University in Ottawa Ontario Canada in 2015 in the title of their study was called does lure color influence per or catch per unit effort fish capture size and hooking injury and angled large mouth bass okay so does color affect how many size and how you hook right I don't the hooking long for short there's no difference in the hooking thing what they used in this study granted it was a very limited study it was one lake in Canada okay so very very I take what you want take what you want right yeah they used six different Sanca's okay it was like like a dark like a green pumpkin or a black a brown there was a bright like bubble gum and like orange color there was white and then like more natural colors in between so it went from like darkest at black to like a more natural color to a bright color all right so there was a correlation between color and size of bass there was not a correlation between really strongly between the number of fish that they caught but there was a very clear one with size the brighter the bait the larger the fish was the brighter the bay in terms of like green or red they could see the color no no no white to black white to black okay so like so the white Sanca like a surgery and the bubble gum pink slash orange worms caught bigger fish than a brown black or green worm okay okay and so this is their hypothesis as to why this is okay so when lure group or when lure color was grouped into the dark natural and bright category so that's two worm each category okay there was a significant relationship detected between the color categories in the total length of fish of captured fish the bright lure color category caught fish that were significantly longer than the fish captured on the dark and natural colors and this is their reasoning smaller bass and hour lakes consume mostly micro vertebrates and crawfish okay small bugs yeah okay right whereas larger bass focus primarily on golden shiners bluegill and shad they transition the larger fish tend to transition into being completely what what is it pissed of the Tory exclusively chasing after other fish and our study bright lure colors orange and white had a significant relationship in the total length of fish length it is possible that like bass in the Christian and more study which is a different study in 2007 experiment largemouth bass and late in the lake that they tested have a functional feeding groups structured by total length the dark black and blue and wild which was their like brown and red lure color groups did not have a significant difference from one another in terms of total length of the fish caught this could be because the functional feeding group of smaller bass suggested by this 2007 study mostly consists of micro invertebrates invertebrates and crawfish that often have a brown red or blue color okay yeah that's something interesting to think about because when you get into the realm of big swim baits stuff like that you find you know bone like why do people throw that bone that bright white you know it's that like there could be something truly to that you know like the color and the size right yeah in your face colors right so all this study to say in all this why this matters is bass can see colors but they cannot differentiate between similar colors unless they're red or green essentially right red or green right you need to purposefully and intentionally have those be part of your arsenals okay right and color variations of those sure they can tell they can tell shading differences right but black and blue I don't care yeah white and sharp truce I don't care right now you can use white and sharp truce as accent colors to like a black jig like if you had a black jig with a bright white trailer on it yeah that's a lot of contrast that's good something I've never done before I've never done that which now I'm certainly interested in doing right it just shows me that certain colors in contrast are incredibly important fish yeah I think this is gonna definitely make me throw red more way more because you hear you hear you know throw red in the spring and then red goes up and then red and then red goes up you know red never comes back out until next I totally agree why why is that I don't know you know I don't know like what makes bass want to well okay it goes up in terms of moving baits but think about summertime though I mean one of my favorite summertime yeah you're true your red shed a red worm yeah and I year after year after year after year I would say that in that heated the summer a trick worm that is like a scupperong or scupperong have you announced that a red shed a black and red flake are pretty consistent and talk about table rock talk about Ozarks that pink worm yeah which has red flake in it has red flake in it is always gonna be successful yeah I'm warning not red flake on table rock you could throw a drop shot anywhere in that lake and if you stuck onto that long enough you will catch a fish for sure and explain yeah that talks a lot because I have so many other drop shot worms just sitting in the bottom of the boat you know that you will try every once in a while okay I was making sure your things on that you're just like I'm not gonna but I'm not gonna but I'm just gonna go back to pink you know and then eventually you know paint prevails whether that's a confidence thing right being in the right spot right that's putting in front of the fish right you know I can confidently say I'm putting some of those other colors in front of fish and they're not eating right because of live scope right because of the electronics you know but there's there's definitely something to say about pink and red you know for sure I mean bubble gum you know all that kind of stuff the other thing I think about is how many times have you and I been out on the water and we're throwing like a chitech or an a rig or a fluke or scoping or whatever you know jig and minnow and we're not getting bit and I go I'm gonna put a little red on the chin and that doesn't how many times have I done that how many times have we done with orange right which is a different hue of that red right it makes a big difference yeah it makes a really big difference and I can tell you right now I'm not gonna be I'm gonna just that's how I'm gonna be out of the box is first cast I'm having red on it like yeah why would you not you know and I just think about like tournament fishing like how many times have you and I been out and you know in tournament and it's like okay Sam's got to bite on this or Corbin's got to bite on this and like the other is trying to set ourselves apart right or right or trying to find a different well a different bite or or perfect or polish and already what could be what's working right I can tell you right now yeah if we're like hey there's a jig bite okay and you're throwing a black jig I'm picking up a red jig yeah I'm picking up a red jig yeah they're so I'm putting a red tree yeah you know yeah and yeah I mean I've had why not why not try it why not try yeah last thing I'll tell you that and then I'll turn it over to you there was a day that I was out with a judge fishing and it was I think it was summertime and we had just gotten a lot of rain and the water was super super murky and he picked up a bright bright red chatterbait and I thought this is what is he doing what is he doing I don't know I don't understand I told him that I was like I don't know why you're doing that like that seems like not the color like I was like I want to throw something more dark right he caught five fish to my one interesting in that to me that's one time yeah it's one time but that just tells me that fish are capable of seeing that red in muddy muddy water I mean we were I mean few inches of visibility yeah yeah now obviously that they're the chatterbait vibration you know a lot of other things playing which I think we should that should be another episode it's like lateral line feeling you know hearing all that kind of stuff right okay so that's yeah that was what I think it's super insightful and I'm I'm still super excited that's that study really dove in that far and everything I think I had a few questions on here about color that was going to ask if you went over anything what did they say anything about chrome when there's a lack of sun or anything I did not look into that but I did one of the guys doing and who analyzed this same study on YouTube that I watched he kind of added like a seventh color to the mix which he called flash yeah which I don't know how that plays I think he's right in classifying that as its own you know category and I it certainly works I mean obviously but where that falls in the mix of target separation and target identification I don't know I don't know I couldn't tell you because I was I was reading through you know some of my stuff and I found you know that they were saying that chrome turns completely gray when you have a lack of sunshine and you think sure you know because of jerkbait fishing a lot around you know the Midwest where we're at you know that you you pick up that matte color you know I love that that color instead of the chrome when the sun goes away yeah I think that's really interesting that's just gray and gray is not a color that you know the fish are care about necessarily interesting it might match the hatch yeah it might match about it other than that yeah right it's not gonna make a difference you know because of your chrome your chrome is not gonna make a difference right right okay I mean that makes total sense you know what did they say about suspended algae and zooplankton and stuff like do they say anything about that for coloration not really I mean I read some interesting stuff about bluegill and about how fish their eyes change over time their ability to identify stuff like that plankton but not really that is what I would consider to be impactful for us because I read this one I read this article and it was on Toledo Bend where I'm gonna be heading here you know in March to go fish for a week and it was saying when the zoo plankton algae get really suspended in those southern lakes that the green and yellow colors pop even more for the fish I don't necessarily know how that would work I don't necessarily believe the yellow as much after what you just you know have brought to us yeah but there's there could be something to that you know having the more green and the water makes the hue of the water change you know you always hear like the lake fort green right right you know like watercolor like I just there might be something well there's no doubt in my mind that water color does impact all of this right how necessarily I still don't know other than just like what my brain would assume to be true if the water's clear they're gonna have a easier time I identify particular colors or differentiating with different colors right some of the research tends to disagree with that when it relates to reds and greens you know like yeah so all right so I basically looked into site distance for bass and how water clarity can play into this a little more I found it very interesting that there is a large lack of research in this area I found I think two decent research articles that talked about this but one of them was from 1998 and the other one was from a recent biologist who studies down in the southern lakes who's part of the Texas wildlife fishing organization down there so there wasn't a whole lot to be said on this but I did find a few interesting things I think and help you know just any fisherman you know it's watching watching this to know like when to throw certain things how shall it to stay certain water depth certain water clarity and things like that so estimated depths and site for large mouth bass to be able to see is most people can want to agree that 50 feet is about as far as they can see in a fairly clear you know far yeah exactly what I was thinking like that's that's that's pretty far if you think you know throwing a lot of links right that's like two boat links two and a half boat links you know for most people's boat but yeah and they said that bass are known to be can or have been found in about 140 feet so they they have to assume that bass can feed down that area right now that is the has to be the clearest water of all time right to be able to be down there so in this study I read it looked at how fish like how fish fed in certain water clearities and I don't think that this study did a great job of separating these bass in their water clearities they did it all in a similar like area of lake but one air to the lake was more clear than another area of the lake so how much of you know sediments moving how clears the water like truly when they're doing their studies it was kind of I think it's hard to say that this study was done super well this isn't when I sent you is it I can't remember if this is the one you sent me I don't think it was because the one I think I sent you was they were in tanks okay anyways okay but the depth of water column available for feeding in low clarity water so basically two footer less was you know 67 to 67% and 75% less than at a moderate foot moderate for the clarity of six and a half feet is what they called moderate so significantly less ability to feed in water clearities when you're at a two foot of visibility for six foot of visibility for 13 foot of visibility sure the difference between six and a half foot and 13 foot was negligible they couldn't really find a difference in there but from going from two foot of clarity to six foot of clarity there's a massive drop off and the ability to feed at those lower depths okay so what you're telling me and I think this might be reflected in the study that I'm sent you which you might already be talking about the snacks the way I'm understanding this is if the water clarity is murky to a certain point you are completely shooting yourself in the foot to be fishing any deeper than say five feet sure yeah exactly and I think that's you need to be fishing in dirty water you need to be spending the majority of your time in shallow water shallow right and that's that's interesting that's become a big shift I feel like in the fishing industry is like let's get deeper well it's it's all you know let's try to get where these fish haven't been caught before totally right but I think there's there's a you know big red stop sign here that says you know if you're fishing Truman Lake you know and you're in the spring and those rivers are flowing in there and you can't see past two foot of water you better not leave you know ten foot or less you know because you're gonna be hunting for bass that can't see your stuff yeah I think that a lot of that I don't disagree with that at all I think that for fishing sonar has completely flipped that kind of on its head a little bit because now because you can place it where there is it in a certain proximity right right there's no doubt in my mind that fish probably I mean you always hear that right well when the water gets dirty fish are wanting to hang out by a piece of structure or by the bottom to give them some type of spatial you know yeah or percept it you know something to to base on right and sounds like a study completely supports that yeah and I will say that the biologist that I was reading his paper on he said that bass have a bet their best vision is it about 10 inches and less wow so you think like a foot in front of them is like their best eyesight like you got to have that big kind of close to to give them a chance if if they're not using scent and their lateral lines if you're if it's just visual visual cues right which this is where the question becomes and we can look at this in later study is in these murk your bodies of water how much more do they rely on those other I'm sure it's elevated right sure it is but still so I will say this talking about light and the clarity that you know brings into the water column there's a study done that said that bass for like changing conditions of like going from sunlight to clouds and how that's affecting like the bass ability to see in the water is that they their pupils adjust very slowly to changing light conditions how interesting so talking like 20 minutes are longer for a bass you know to go from like it's bright outside to a cloud comes in front it gets like much darker like as you can see on the water or like going from you know five p.m. to six p.m. the sun's going down type of thing and they said that that even though it takes them 20 minutes or so to like change their pupils over completely and they're constantly changing as the light gets darker and darker throughout the night that the bait fish that they're usually feeding on take twice as long to change their pupils so that's why they think that feeding times for bass in those early morning and late night hours like before like it's super dark is why they feed so well oh because they're prey and their prey cannot see at the same level that they came I saw something in this might actually be we might have both read this yes that that bass understand that they have superior knowledge at at those critical changing points right to where they can get away with a little bit more yeah that their prey can't understand which is crazy and you know what that also tells me and you know one of my resolutions this year is is just to really spend a lot of time or more time with a dock fishing it it makes a lot of sense yeah makes a lot of sense why you got ambush points hanging around I mean obviously right there are lots of different reasons why a dock would be an ambush point but that that's in my mind would be a huge one yeah yeah very much so but I found that pretty cool and like the reasoning why we like to fish at night you know is because they have the superior vision it's like they're their animals of prey right other predators out and allows them to feed successfully right and they become more aggressive in that time because they're able they have bigger eyes yeah I mean think about like animals like you know like a leopard or think about you know it's a lion or something or or even like an owl they're really big eyes to allow that light to come in I'm interesting yeah I did read something to that the size of the bass makes a huge difference in their in their ability to see in their eyesight like the age be age and but particularly size because their eyes are larger on larger bass so that's why you may be able to trick or you know get a younger bass to feed because I can't see because they cannot see as well like they purely cannot see as well well how interesting right mixed with I mean other factors but yeah but that's just some one of the many that play into that and see it better right that's why you got to be so right wow one thing I found that I feel like it could help a lot of fishermen and like determining you know how deep they should be fishing is lowering a white object spinnerbait or a jig until it disappears to try to get your depth of water clarity and then or red measure that yeah whatever whatever it is like easiest for you to see you know likely and then measure that distance and multiply it by four to estimate the depth at which a bass can effectively use its vision no way yeah by four yeah so if you have about three foot of clarity you know not very much 12 feet you got 12 feet and you should probably stay 12 feet or less unless you're trying to live scope drop it directly on a fish's head oh so you're saying that that is the depth that you should aim to be fishing in or shallower in or shallower because that's their effective vision in that depth like that's where they are still effective right so when it gets when it starts to get murked up here come spring you know all this runoff from snow and do your little testing say hey we're gonna drop this down say hey I think I can see it's about three feet down say we're gonna stay and you know 12 feet or less wow you know I think that I I think that's good information is I think that can eliminate a lot of water well it limits a lot of water it also tells you you know especially in like a tournament situation of like when you're trying to piece together well what should we do or what could we do you now start to think well we've got two feet of visibility so we really got eight right you set parameters you set parameters and so now you're going well okay I'm gonna work with eight feet of water or less or I'm gonna turn on the screen and go find something cruising you know you're trying to find a solo you're still I think you're not trying to put yourself in the majority of feeding fish correct right and I think that the presence of forward-facing sound on which we use in a way supersedes some of this research because you're you know yeah yeah yeah in a way there's always there's always caveats to everything right but this is for the majority yeah I like you know most fish are gonna fall into this category there's obviously that outliers right I don't know if I had a hole I'm on that because there wasn't a whole lot to be saying I did you know notice that most of the size I read you know talked about bass having binocular vision only when they're seeing in front of them because other so binocular vision we have binocular vision right all our eyes are you at the same time everywhere we look right that piece it together right and that's how we see the world right they have binocular vision only when they look forward well sure that would make sense because they're eyes right because I'm sure but that also plays into why having the bay directly in front of them in forward-facing sonar makes such a difference because they can see it so much better so much better and that's why a lot of times when bass strike from it off to a side they miss much more because they go to monocular vision that makes total sense I thought that was pretty cool inside you know to you know putting a lure out there and why you throw a lure out in front of a bass it's swimming you know on your ship direction on yeah on live scope or perspective you're like why didn't that bass hit but the next time you throw it you actually get it in front of them and they eat it oh my god I can't I mean think about how many times that you and I have chased a particular fish and been like I mean we both together have said I don't think we've got he's got a good look at it right whereas on the screen I can tell like well I'm two inches from this thing but you can still tell like he doesn't have a look of it right you know he's not getting a good look at right and that's yeah that's how live scope is going to play in a so much research here in the future of all the water research totally but as of now you know this is what we have available um I would say the last thing that I kind of read about was the mosaic pattern in their eyes and how they have double cone cells that's yeah and right a lot of that was in the play with your topic but if that that double cone cell allows them to see polarized light which being able to see polarized light no glare yeah allows them to hunt and turbid waters so I think with that being said is like don't be afraid of the wind you know like you so yeah find the wind right because you know you think find the wind because they're all the baits getting pushed right there or the plankton whatever in the baits following that and the bass are following that right it just goes to show like studies have shown that that's being seen polarized light allows them to break up you know the wavy water allows them to get a hunt well in those waters yeah so yeah how interesting good good good information you know see if I can't it's out there but there definitely needs to be a lot more find maybe before we wrap up I want to find this article that I sent you is this the one that you yeah yeah okay all right so I guess for context this is an article in the journal of fishing biology from April of 2005 that was written by Thomas McHan at the Montana State University in the title of it is foraging success of large mouth bass at different light intensities implications for time and depth of feeding yeah very interesting article and yeah the fact the other well the other thing I think that was in here that I wanted to talk about that you did not mention is very light is the light the light in moonlight about how how drastically fish hunting is impacted by the ability of rice brightness I mean the I'll spare all of the details but essentially what it is saying is that in dark conditions they're feeding frequency and the depth at which they feed decreases significantly right which makes sense because they can't see they they totally make sense and also it that also makes me want want us to study the lateral line situation because I mean you and I know just as good as anybody that nighttime fishing can be great right incredibly effective yeah that's what they do on like fork in the summer yeah it's so hot out there in Texas yeah so I mean there's got to be some play to it I mean moonlight at in that study you can read you know the moon fish still feed well in moonlight it's when it gets to starlight is what they said when like pure moonlight is gone almost nothing that they almost like can't feed anymore yeah I mean it tells you that if you're fishing at nighttime if you're gonna go night fishing it's better to either have some type of artificial light around you by way of you know green lights or dock lights or whatever yeah if you're going out and hitch black good luck yeah make sure the moon's out yeah the last thing I want I guess I'll say and then we can wrap this up I know I just said that is people might be wondering about light and UV penetration into water and how that might affect lure color I'm kind of going back to the color situation okay so if you're scuba diver I guess anybody of our three people who might watch this scuba dive you know that UV light cannot penetrate water cannot penetrate water in some respects and so certain colors at certain depths are eliminated the first being red so when you scuba dive and you go down to certain depths a piece of coral or a fish that might normally appear to you red will appear to you as brown right and and as you get deeper and deeper certain colors begin to disappear all right I don't know exactly it'd be an easy Google search to figure out and what order they disappear but red is the first and blue is the last now we now know that it doesn't really matter that blue right all this is say is that being the case does not eliminate anything that we said about fish targeting red I watched a YouTube video of a guy who was worried about this exact problem and he submerged fishing lures from red Chartreuse white blue green purple all you name all of them and he dropped it down in a lake that I would consider to be well two multiple different lakes that was from clear to stained to murky and he dropped them down to like 80 feet in all of these lakes yeah you could see everything well okay like I I don't think that that really makes a huge difference but for anybody wondering if red you know if you want to get away from red because if you're fishing in a certain depth I would say no okay I would tend to say no so all right well that's the first I've first thing on site yeah I think scent should probably be next scent would be an interesting one there's a lot of scent out there I think it'd be cool to see you know what is worth a purchase you know if we would be able to figure that out well I can tell you what that this study absolutely confirms that it is worth a purchase yeah yeah definitely definitely definitely you know scent makes a difference you know but yeah I'll definitely be adding some red to my box oh my god I mean red jigs I want red trailers I mean a red marker yeah we make saw plastics I don't have any red glitter I'm gonna get some red glitter I'm gonna get some red dye you know yeah like we're throwing watermelon red more you know it makes sense I mean it just makes sense why why red you know all right all all right peace out thanks for watching