Technical approach to fishing Part 1

[Ronje]

The 2 most important issues in relation to fishing are:

1. the environment that the fish live in; and

2. What tools do they have to survive in that environment after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

Obviously different survival tools to humans because of the differing environment.

There are no opinions, experience or guessing involved.

Just plain facts "fact-checked" by peer examination before publishing.
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Setting the scene..What effect does water have on colour penetration?

Forget all about fishing and just look at the environment in which these animals live and have evolved in over hundreds of thousands of years.

Bit different to human evolution.

So what effect does the presence of water have?

It depends on the clarity/visibility of the water.

Clear water like ocean water filters out colours gradually starting at red first and going up the colour chain with blue being the last to “fade to black”.

How do we know that?

These pretty credible guys (along with many scientists and military) have researched the subject to death.

https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/edu/mate ... -sheet.pdf

like so:

.......

NOAA doesn’t study freshwater, so lake, impoundment and estuary investigations were left to private industry and/or scholarly organisations (universities etc) to pursue.

Those types of organisations had looked at that subject when researching light penetration in water for photosynthesis purposes relating to food production from 1990.

Before the work of scientists and universities came research by the US military in 1967 for the purposes of submarine camouflage and other reasons in shallow inshore waters.

That was in 1967. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0661156.pdf

The interest in lake, impoundment and estuary waters was carried out earlier than NOAA but the display later modified to match NOAA’s images for easier comparison.

These “laws” of colour penetration in water are universal. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, these same laws of physics apply.

I’ve posted this as a stand-alone entry because this is fundamental and impacts lure fishing all over the world.

[Ronje]

Technical approach to fishing –continued

Let’s clear the decks of all the b/s that’s been written on the subject to date.

In those writings you’ll find terminology like hue, chromaticity, saturation, primary, secondary and/or tertiary relating to colour.

Looking back over posts you’ll come across ALL of these terms mainly used for the purpose of instilling into the reader a sense of credibility about the writer.

Mostly use of those terms is an attempt to induce a belief (sometimes false) that the writer is well versed in the subject but usually that's not the case.

I believe that the intention is mostly to deter the reader from asking awkward questions.

There’s a time and a place for these terms but on a forum discussing fishing ISN'T one of them.

The use of exotic words to impress mostly means “zip” to a fisherman.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

What have we found so far?

That different clarity/visibility water affects different colours in different ways.

No big words. Just a couple of colourful images gets the message across.

Which is:

1.IN CLEAR WATER, BLUE PENETRATES and red doesn’t get a look-in.

2.IN NOT SO CLEAR WATER (COASTAL/INSHORE), GREEN PENETRATES and blue/red don’t get much of a look-in.

3. IN LAKE WATER, RED PENETRATES and blue doesn’t get a look-in.

Its not rocket science. It’s a simple law of high school physics but we don’t have to go back to school to be aware of principles 1, 2 and 3.

Just remember that there are a couple of very clear lakes where principle 1 applies but not many. Eg Crater Lake in Oregon has average visibility of 100 ft so falls under the same category as clear ocean water.

So…how do we know the visibility of in water that we want to fish in?

Well, in clear ocean or coastal water, its pretty obvious. Plenty of visibility. Principles 1 or 2.

What about lake or estuary water visibility where its harder to judge? Do we need fancy measuring equipment? No we don’t. Just our rod and a brightly coloured lure.

Wind the lure up to the tip and stick it down into the water beside the boat until the lure disappears. Note the depth on the rod (maybe by how many line runners are submerged).

Double that estimate and THAT is the water VISIBILITY . Easy peasy?

And what does that little exercise tell us?

It tells us which of the 3 colourful images we need to look at for best penetration in that water. The first 2 water types pick themselves. The 3rd one (lake/estuary) is the one where we might need to do that exercise.

And we haven’t even thrown a lure in the water yet.

[Ronje]

Technical approach to fishing –Part 1


You might think that we're approaching this slowly and you're right.

What sort of water are we fishing in? Oceanic, coastal or lake/estuary?

Shouldn’t be hard to work out.

For LMB fishing (mostly lakes), it’ll be this one:

On the left is the lake/estuary diagram.

On the right image, look at point X which moves to left as the water visibility increases.

As the water visibility increases, the diagram is telling us to move from red towards pink, orange, chartreuse or green sequentially for 10 – 12 ft visibility or a bit more.

Conversely, as the visibility deteriorates move the lure choice back towards red.

None of this is exact (how can it be) but what we need to store in the memory banks is that orange, chartreuse and green penetrate lake water better than red as the visibility increases.

And we know from the last post how to “guesstimate” water visibility, don’t we!

THAT’S it. That’s all we need to know about how the basic laws of physics affect the colours in the water environment. As said before, it AIN'T rocket science.

So….is there anything likely to complicate that once we actually start fishing for LMB?

Well…there is and next time we’ll have a look at how one of the LMB tools has evolved so that it complicates things a bit.

[Ronje]

Technical approach to fishing –Part 2

Now that we’ve finally discovered that the colour red is NOT the first colour to disappear in ALL types of water (only 1 - being clear water), we’ve put one of the most confusing and long-lasting myths about lure colours to bed.

It turned out that it was simple physics and it took time for the message to “sink in” even with some of the scientists who fish.

Take much time? Nah. Only 57 years and it still hasn't sunk in with most. But then, myths die hard.

That was problem number 1 but the evolution problem associated with LMB fishing was only confirmed by scientist Dr Lisa Mitchem and her team from University of Virginia in 2018.

The discovery? Large Mouth Bass are colourblind.

They cannot see the colour blue because the “evolution gods” didn’t provide a blue colour receptor for their eyes.

Only red and green because a blue receptor is only necessary for fish that have evolved in clear or oceanic water and LMB didn't.

We have similar circumstances in Aus with freshwater fish having only red and green photoreceptors.

Hence the title of Mitchem’s research --- "Seeing red: Color vision in largemouth bass".

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... mouth_bass.

I’ve engaged with a number of high profile "experts" in US forums to be told “Yeah. We know about that. So what”?

When asking what effect that news had on them, the answer was usually “none”.

With some who seemed to be taken aback with the news, it was a "straight-forward evasion".

What was obvious was that these experts could not (or didn’t want to) seem to understand the ramifications and what that meant to the longstanding lure industry and also what that meant to a lot of "expert" egos.

Once again, its not rocket science to delve into colour blindness.

I quoted a LMB fishing competition about white vs yellow lures. That the competitors called it a draw. Same lures (different colours) , same waters (suburban lake), fishos side-by-side.

So what is the physics behind being colourblind to blue?

Don’t get excited as you don’t have to remember all that follows.

Straight forward so far?

So what happens when the observer has no blue photoceptor in the eye (is colourblind to blue)?

NOW maybe we can see why I said that the LMB fishing competition between white lures and yellow lures was going to turn out meaningless as the participants were NOT aware of the above.

Surely that also applies to ANY colour that has a blue component then?

Yes. It does with the ultimate colour being a blue lure.

With no blue receptor, no light reflected by the blue lure gets to the LMB brain for processing so how is the absence of light be perceived? How would the brain of a LMB process a blue lure?

Easy. BLACK

As I said..we’re going slowly as the ramifications of Lisa Mitchem’s research from 2018 was not understood by the “experts” with egos (and sometimes income) at stake.

Better to be confidently wrong than hesitantly correct? Unfortunately, there’s quite a bit of that around in fishing circles.

[Ronje]

Big day for you guys tomorrow (7th Dec).

Technical approach to fishing –Part 2

The previous post may have been hard to swallow for some who have both finances and ego invested in the subject of lure colour selection for LMB fishing.

But its hard fact (not opinion or wishful thinking).

So how does the “evolution problem” impact on LMB fishing?

It changes the way that lure colours are affected by LMB colour blindness.

Some colours on the LHS have no blue component in the mix and are not perceived any differently by LMB to the way we humans see them. eg red stays red. green stays green.

However, colours which do have a blue component in the mix, are perceived differently by LMB eg blue goes black and white goes yellow.

So how can we humble fishermen work that stuff out?

It was hard enough sorting out what water does to colours without throwing in complications of what LMB eyes do as well.

However, neither subject is rocket science. Where have I heard that before?

How about I give you 15 or so common lure colours on a chart.

Original colour down the LHS is how we humans see that RGB mix.

On the RHS is how a LMB will see that same RGB colour mix.

They’ll change to the colour on the RHS because of the blue component in their RGB mix (marked with a star) that the LMB eyes can't see.

Not all of the 15 colours will change.

Some will change more radically than others to a LMB with some looking completely different to the way we humans see that same colour mix with our eyes.

Now we can understand why so much confusion exists about lure colours and LMB.

Take a bit of time to think about the above but one outcome is for sure.

We no longer need to carry so many lures of differing colours in the lure box.

[Ronje]

Technical approach to fishing –Part 2

Well, we’ve had time to look at the chart on the previous post and absorb the impact of the “evolution problem” caused by LMB not having a blue colour receptor.

I’ve worked that out for you in respect of those 15 lure colours.

But you guys don’t need ME to work it out. It’s simple for anybody to work out for themselves.

The question you guys need to ask yourselves is:

How does a LMB see my favourite lure colour? How do we work that out?

Ever heard of a RGB Colour Mixer?

Here's one. https://www.csfieldguide.org.nz/en/inte ... rgb-mixer/

Say our favourite LMB lure is white.

On any RGB mixer, it looks like this:

Easy with equal amounts of red, green and blue (RGB mix)

The result is WHITE.

What happens when there’s no blue component?

We get this:

Now the result is yellow. Pretty dramatic colour change, eh! Our white lure is seen as yellow by a lurking LMB.

No blue colour component gets past the LMB’s eye to be processed by the brain.

Let's do one more.

What about a more exotically coloured favourite LMB lure?

Like Fuchsia (at least it’s an exotic sounding word).

We might not catch a fish but we are assured of winning the award for the prettiest lure on the lake.

So how will a LMB see our pretty award-winning lure? Not so exotic, pretty or award winning.

A LMB would see it as common old Red.

There are thousands of colours with blue colour components in their RGB colour mix and I’ve shown you about 15 or so.

I’d recommend keeping the number down around that.

There are only 2 major variables to worry about.

Water visibility and LMB colour blindness and we’ve worked out how to address both of them.

That's it.