Lure Colors and how they change at depth

Started by Wolfram M, April 15, 2023, 05:58:57 PM

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Wolfram M

Found this today. Really changes the way I look at lure colors!

https://i.imgur.com/IiIw4dM.mp4

whalebreath

Well Yes that's what it looks like for human eyes we have little idea what fish see- just guesses.

Bryan Young

One of Alan's friends from the past and an avid fisherman wrote a book about it. He was also contracted by Mepps to develop colors for their lures. Here's a link to his book.

What Fish See: Understanding Optics and Color Shifts for Designing Lures and Flies https://a.co/d/3XOg6mI
:D I talk with every part I send out and each reel I repair so that they perform at the top of their game. :D

jurelometer

#3
Not a marine biologist, but this is how I would describe it:

Colors don't really transform at depth. It is just that different frequency light waves get absorbed at different rates when passing through water, so colors just fade to black at at different rates as well.  There is a minor exception with fluorescent colors that will kick light back out in a different wavelength than what came in. That bright neon green is bouncing back blue light as green at a depth where green light direct from the sun is not reaching.

  And whatever is in the water (sediments, algae, etc) will also absorb certain frequency ranges, acting like a light filter. So color loss with depth is not the same in all waters.

Most fish that don't live quite  close to the surface in clear water have a narrow range of color vision, and therefore the color receptors are  more useful for their greater acuity rather than for providing a richer image.  The water color will give you a good clue on what colors the fishes vision is set up to see.  Blue water -blue receptors, green water - green receptors. It is a waste of eyeball real estate to have receptors for light waves that have little chance of making it to where the fish lives.

The color receptors are also distributed differently to accommodate the compromised visual environment.  For example, blue marlin have blue color receptors, concentrated toward the top half of the eye. Makes sense if you think about it.  Go for acuity when looking up where there is light is available, and use more of the sensitive, but less accurate receptors when looking down where everything is dark.

Lots of scientific papers on fish vision,  and color vision is just a small part of it.   Quite fascinating stuff!

If you ask me, the main function of all those different lure colors is to attract fishermen ;)

-J

Midway Tommy

Quote from: jurelometer on April 17, 2023, 07:29:55 AMIf you ask me, the main function of all those different lure colors is to attract fishermen ;)

-J

Yep. Don't know much of anything about saltwater but, IMHO, shades/flash consistent with the natural food source and the fish's lateral line response is the key to fresh water coloring.
Love those open face spinning reels! (Especially ABU & ABU/Zebco Cardinals)

Tommy D (ORCA), NE



Favorite Activity? ............... In our boat fishing
RELAXING w/ MY BEST FRIEND (My wife Bonnie)

JasonGotaProblem

Ok so I'm out of my league here. But lure coloration is loosely based on mimicking the color of your target's prey, right?

Don't those changes in light at depth also affect the appearance of the actual bait fish colors similarly?
Any machine is a smoke machine if you use it wrong enough.

Wolfram M

The colors are still the colors-we're looking at reflected light. Doesn't matter if you're a fish or a human, the color stays the same whether you are capable of seeing it or not.

What I was getting at is how the colors shift at depth, and how that red tube went nearly black-that'd explain why a lot of red-colored fish are found at depths where they'd appear black if the only light source was from the sun, and not a camera light or similar.

Explains a lot about the colors we see in baitfish too!

Squidder Bidder

Quote from: JasonGotaProblem on April 17, 2023, 05:12:38 PMOk so I'm out of my league here. But lure coloration is loosely based on mimicking the color of your target's prey, right?

Don't those changes in light at depth also affect the appearance of the actual bait fish colors similarly?

You'd think so but I think it really depends on the situation. Some theorize that colors which don't match the prey species are interpreted by fish as an indicator of weakness/ill health in the targeted prey. Thus, some guys fish daisy chains of birds or lures all of one color and then the stinger of a contrasting color. The theory is that the stinger looks like the one baitfish out of the school which can't keep up with the rest of the baitfish and is under stress.

Hot pink works on numerous species and the only things I can think of that is numerous and shaded slightly pink are squid. But obviously there's an enormous difference between hot pink and naturally occurring shades of pink displayed by squid or other ocean creatures. I've seen one big blue marlin after another pile on an unarmed magnum moldcraft in hot pink pulled as a teaser. It doesn't really look like any squid or other baitfish in nature, and real baitfish don't continue swimming straight after they've been hit with bill swipes and bitten a few times. My guess is that for apex predator pelagic species like marlin you're not dealing with a prey drive exclusively and that they're inquisitive and aggressive or maybe territorial. But once they've been frustrated by an inability to kill the teaser they get more aggressive about biting the next thing they see. It could just be the nature of being an offshore pelagic species that if you see something that could possibly be food you really need to go and investigate it aggressively because the cupboard could be bare for a while if you don't. I think it was the elder Marlin Parker who started pulling mudflaps and busted tires as teasers in Kona and found that they attracted marlin.

Contrast to an inshore species, which can probably stand to be more wary and picky because forage species are more densely accumulated, while they're also more likely to be food for something even bigger so the risk calculus is more balanced between eating and staying safe.

My personal experience seems to be that the lures which look the most lifelike have produced the least for me, while lures that don't look like anything in nature can clean up. I would hazard that the action is probably much more important than the graphical representation and colors matching the natural prey species in enticing a fish to bite something. Something that looks very much like a natural representation of a bait fish might not swim like one at all. Whether that is an issue with the fish's visual faculties or its lateral line is anyone's guess.

jurelometer

The scientist play games with fish eyes and all sorts of devices, and in the paper that I read on blue marlin vision,  they found only blue cone cells, all  concentrated in the top half of the eye.  They can't see pink.  Should be similar for other marlin species.

The reason for the natural baitfish coloration is camouflage.  Green water appears green because the other colors are being absorbed more (blue is getting absorbed by the algae).   A bait with a green back in green water will reflect light from above, instead of appearing dark, which is what would happen if the back was blue, red, hot pink, etc. 

As a fisherman you get to make a choice.  Try to go as natural as possible to have a more accurate (but less visible) imitation, or go for more contrast to noble being seen more easily.  BTW, the accuracy comes from the better acuity that the eye's cone cells provides. Color vision in only one color doesn't provide much more than this.

It is true that when a baitfish is not healthy or even startled, it is less effective at staying camouflaged.  We have all seen that.  I don't think that the bait is changing color tint so much. trouble staying oriented perfectly upright where the scales reflect light at different angles, breaking up the profile like a sci-fi cloaking device.

You can be pretty close to a bonefish on the flats, and if you don't see it's shadow on the bottom or the eye, it can be pretty hard to see it.   The scales are like thousands of mirrors reflecting  bits ofthe sand, rocks and plants on the bottom all around it.  When you get close to landing the bonefish, it  starts rolling a bit and becomes more visible. On its side in your hand, it flashes like a mirror.  Release the bonefish, and as it leaves your hand and re-orients itself, it starts to disappear again.

As for accurate imitations: in addition to making the lure potentially less visible, what the humam sees as important in identifying a baitfish is probably far different than what a fish is looking for with its very different visual system. 

 In open water, fish will have more feeding opportunities  by more having more sensitive, but less accurate vision (seeing more baitfish sooner).  The same is true when avoiding predators.  If you can see a predator  before it  sees you, big advantage.  It is the good old evolutionary arms race.  Only the most optimized survive.

Now in shallow clear water, the story is a bit different.  If a a crab or crayfish is hunkered down trying to look invisible,  more acuity and even some multi-color vision can come in handy for the predator feeding in daylight.  But these predators often feed in low light conditions when the prey is out and moving around, at which point acuity becomes less valuable then sensitivity. Some species will actually shift the rod cells in the eyes outward/inward based on time of day trading off between  acuity and  sensitivity based on probable light levels.

Lots of other aspects of fish vision that are more important than color for fishermen, but there never seems to be much interest.

-J

Squidder Bidder

Thanks for furthering the conversation, jurelometer. I can say I've really learned something.

From a practical perspective, therefore, very different colors to the human eye (i.e., neon green vs. hot pink) would just be perceived as different shades of blue by a marlin even at the surface - shades which may be more similar in marlinvision than in people vision.

JasonGotaProblem

I think we have more insight than we think. Just ask a colorblind person what they see. A fellow I work with can't see blue/red. And he's on a hockey team. So when his blue team plays the purple team, he's looking at the players faces to recognize someone on his team when he's looking to pass.

So what does a blue lure look like to a marlin? Blue. What's a green lure look like to a marlin? Not blue. What does a green fish look like to a marlin? Not blue. He sees it. And sees that it's not blue.
Any machine is a smoke machine if you use it wrong enough.

jiggermyster

Quote from: JasonGotaProblem on April 18, 2023, 07:31:16 PMI think we have more insight than we think. Just ask a colorblind person what they see. A fellow I work with can't see blue/red. And he's on a hockey team. So when his blue team plays the purple team, he's looking at the players faces to recognize someone on his team when he's looking to pass.

So what does a blue lure look like to a marlin? Blue. What's a green lure look like to a marlin? Not blue. What does a green fish look like to a marlin? Not blue. He sees it. And sees that it's not blue.
40 years ago I new a guy who worked for Ma Bell. He was colorblind yet he had no problem working with those POTS lines.
He could see yellow though, so his car and boat and house were all yellow.

I took a ride in a submarine over in Hawaii. They turn off the lights inside so the only light is what comes in the observation portholes.
It was a trip to see all the bright Hawaiian shirts fade to gray as we descended.
Aside from the big ol' Ulua that swam by, that color change was the most interesting part of the dive.

DYHOLI!

jurelometer

#12
Quote from: Squidder Bidder on April 18, 2023, 07:13:47 PMThanks for furthering the conversation, jurelometer. I can say I've really learned something.

From a practical perspective, therefore, very different colors to the human eye (i.e., neon green vs. hot pink) would just be perceived as different shades of blue by a marlin even at the surface - shades which may be more similar in marlinvision than in people vision.

Thanks for the kind words. 

Jason and Jigepgermeister hit on it. If you can't see a certain color, you simply don't see it with the color vision component of your eyesight.  So there is just the non color specific component to rely on (what we call black and white/grey scale/night vision).

From the sciencey side of things it works like this:

The blue sensitive cone receptors in that marlin's eye will fire off when hit by a light wave in the proper frequency range (more or less just blues).  Nothing happens if you hit it with a red or green wave. This lack of stimulation is what us humans call black.

The chemical in the receptor in the cone determines  what range of  frequencies  will cause the electrical impulse to occur, and the impulse will be strongest in the center of the range.

Rod cells will respond to a wider range of frequencies and are more sensitive.  The frequency range that the rods will respond to will vary by specie, and is based on environment where the fish will be found. The less distance that a frequency can travel underwater, the less likely that a rod cell will have the ability to pick it up. Rod cells in fish are centered on blue frequencies as well.

We can't get into a fishes mind, but I think a better way to think about how a marlin perceives a baitfish would be as a profile against a background.  If the signal  is weak, the profile will be blurry (all rod cells), but if the signal has a strong enough blue frequency component, the cone cells will also fire off providing a sharpening of the image.

There are fish that can see more colors, but that doesn't mean that the processing has to be complex.  There is a certain species (maybe a tetra?) that will go into mating mode when shown the right shade of red. Doesn't have to be anything specific, just the right color.   Pretty simple and efficient logic there.

Note that I am not a marine biologist, just a science fanboy, and my explanations here are a bit simplified.

-J

jurelometer

#13
Finally found a version not paywall protected.  Published scientific article title: "Vision in Tunas and "Marlins"


Older paper, but still pretty  interesting:

https://core.ac.uk/reader/144563588


Just skimmed it far, but here are some takeaways:

1. Tunas and marlins are probably all colorblind.

2. Lots of cone cells for high acuity, providing ability to recognize fast moving shapes.

3. Acuity is greatest upward for tuna  and forward/upward for marlin.


Note that all fish are not colorblind.  Shallow clear freshwater fish usually have color vision.

-J

the rockfish ninja

I posted that vid in a thread here years ago, at the time I was heavily researching lure color, and have learned a bit since then.

All the talk about matching baitfish color held less & less merit the more I learned and put into practice. Maybe for fly fishing (match the hatch) and some lure casting it's more important, but for jigging deep water I found trying to match what's down there being fed on was a huge time waste. From my results I found that jig/lure movement made much more of a difference, and being more noticeable got more results (ie:loud colors or black), also at deep depths any type of glow stripes or accents made the biggest difference.

I also have come to adhere to the color of lures being effected by weather conditions philosophy that Bass anglers use, light or shiny colors for bright and sunny conditions and dark colors when it's overcast, although I've reversed it and had good action also, but as rule of thumb I've stuck to it and it has paid off.
Deadly Sebastes assassin.