SCIENTISTS REVEAL HOT COLORS FOR TUNA LURES!!!

[jurelometer]

I do a lot of jig fishing in 200-250ft and for a long time my go-to was a black jig with black skirts and not a hint of anything else. The latest season, it was a yellow/orange jig that consistently performed the best. Who knows. I think what is more important to a fish when it comes to color is that it resembles something they might eat normally.

That first assumes that they can see the color.  At 200 feet there is absolutely zero yellow and red light available. And the target species will have zero ability to see those colors. So there is either something different with the two jigs, or the catch numbers are not a clean sample set-  you would have to be switching back and forth between paint jobs on every drop or two to get reasonably accurate samples-  and somebody has to start the drop for you, so you don't know which color you are fishing 

But if your goal is to catch fish, who am I to argue with simply continuing to do what works.

-J

[boon]

That first assumes that they can see the color.  At 200 feet there is absolutely zero yellow and red light available. And the target species will have zero ability to see those colors. So there is either something different with the two jigs, or the catch numbers are not a clean sample set-  you would have to be switching back and forth between paint jobs on every drop or two to get reasonably accurate samples-  and somebody has to start the drop for you, so you don't know which color you are fishing 

But if your goal is to catch fish, who am I to argue with simply continuing to do what works.

-J

The science behind it all makes sense. The part I guess we don't know, and therefore we just have to speculate about, is how does it look to a fish - does a yellow jig at 300ft look exactly the same as a pink one, or a black one? If the target species primary prey is bright yellow (at the surface), at 300ft would it look exactly the same if it was bright green? If we're hoping that the color triggers some level of recognition of the lure as prey, and therefore an attempt to eat it.

I'm inclined to believe that action (both inherent and imparted by the angler) of a lure is more important for getting a bite than any particular aesthetic aspect.

[Keta]

From my limited use of eddy bombs a mid speed retrieve with no imparted "action" was what worked for most fish.

[boon]

From my limited use of eddy bombs a mid speed retrieve with no imparted "action" was what worked for most fish.

That is, in itself, an "action" of sorts.
I do a lot of Kabura fishing. A slow wind with no rod movement at all is often what gets the bite.

[Keta]

True

[jurelometer]

The science behind it all makes sense. The part I guess we don't know, and therefore we just have to speculate about, is how does it look to a fish - does a yellow jig at 300ft look exactly the same as a pink one, or a black one? If the target species primary prey is bright yellow (at the surface), at 300ft would it look exactly the same if it was bright green? If we're hoping that the color triggers some level of recognition of the lure as prey, and therefore an attempt to eat it.

We do not have to speculate! We do know how these colors looks to a fish at 300 ft!  There is nothing to see. If there are no light waves available in the frequency for that color, then there is nothing to to bounce off of objects that can reflect that frequency/color.

At 300 feet a yellow paintjob  is the same as bright green.  Or red, or whatever. They are all just black.  Those low frequency/high wavelength light waves are long gone. They have all been absorbed and converted to heat by the water.  That is why us humans with our trichromatic vision can't see any reds, yellows or greens either when scuba diving past 30 feet or so (often less). 

Plus deepwater species won't have receptors for colors that don't reach them. 

I respect that this is kind of non-intuitive to us humans who see color as an inherent property of an object.  But color is actually just a perception. And this perception requires more than a surface coated with a specific material.  It requires light waves of certain frequencies as well. Your yellow jig ain't really yellow until a yellow light wave bounces off of it and gets picked up by the red and green cone cells in your eye.  Otherwise it is just black (no signal).

Maybe more on this later, but I am losing steam

I'm inclined to believe that action (both inherent and imparted by the angler) of a lure is more important for getting a bite than any particular aesthetic aspect.

No argument there.

-J

[Gobi King]

Not sure how deep this guy was trolling but the salmon definite saw the spoon

[boon]

The science behind it all makes sense. The part I guess we don't know, and therefore we just have to speculate about, is how does it look to a fish - does a yellow jig at 300ft look exactly the same as a pink one, or a black one? If the target species primary prey is bright yellow (at the surface), at 300ft would it look exactly the same if it was bright green? If we're hoping that the color triggers some level of recognition of the lure as prey, and therefore an attempt to eat it.

We do not have to speculate! We do know how these colors looks to a fish at 300 ft!  There is nothing to see. If there are no light waves available in the frequency for that color, then there is nothing to to bounce off of objects that can reflect that frequency/color.

At 300 feet a yellow paintjob  is the same as bright green.  Or red, or whatever. They are all just black.  Those low frequency/high wavelength light waves are long gone. They have all been absorbed and converted to heat by the water.  That is why us humans with our trichromatic vision can't see any reds, yellows or greens either when scuba diving past 30 feet or so (often less). 

Plus deepwater species won't have receptors for colors that don't reach them. 

This all makes good sense to me. If there's no light of wavelength x at that depth then it's functionally black, right - black being the absence of any other reflected wavelength. Likewise for what is perceived by the brain on the basis of signals sent from the eyeball.

Someone said it before in this thread, but I guess all those pretty paintjobs really are mostly for the angler's benefit, not the fishes 

[Keta]

Black and grey.

[Gobi King]

At 100ft

[jurelometer]

Interesting videos Shibs, but I wouldn't take too much from being a human looking at a GoPro shot with all kinds of image enhancements.  The salmon do their own enhancements for their own purposes.  And downrigger guys are notorious for getting depth wrong.  They are usually just telling you how much line they have out on the downrigger. The smarter ones will at least tell you that depth is "on the wire" But, yes, salmon are highly visual feeders.

On the salmon  videos, you can see many sideways  turns when the salmon are in close  checking out the lure.  I wouldn't be surprised if that was using the lateral line and getting confused as to why the pressure wave was so odd compared to what they are used to chasing.  When jigging for fired up groupers in shallow water, I have seen them go nuts twisting around trying to lock in with their lateral lines to get a shot at a bouncing jig that is not running away.

On salmon and color vision:

When pacific salmon species (and rainbow trout) first hatch,  they have UV light receptors, but these get turned into  to blue receptors (around 430 nm) as they grow up and switch from feeding primarily on plankton to larger prey.  Pacific salmon  do have color vision with three types of cone cells from blue to the low end of the reds. So good news for all the salmon trolling crazies out there that are big on swapping around color schemes.  At least the salmon can see those colors if you are fishing shallow enough. 

True UV "colors" ain't going to you no good.  Adult salmon won't see them.  But  that is OK, because us humans can't see UV either.  When we go to the tackle shop and pick out those "UV" colors that salmon fishermen like so much like purple haze, we are seeing non UV colors anyways. We wouldn't be able to pick out a highly UV reflective lure if we were staring right at it 

UV light is right at the borderline of the range of  wavelengths that can pass through water, so it diffuses quickly and doesn't travel far, so just a near surface thing. Plus UV light damages cells.  So don't plan on a long life with good acuity if you have UV receptors instead of UV filtering in your eyes.  UV vision is more common on land based species and some shallower water marine life.  There is such a thing as UV reactive colors (fluorescent), but we can save that for later.

One thing that we haven't covered much is the density and distribution of the various types of receptors.  In addition to wavelength overlap, salmon eye cone cells are layed out to favor better reception of greens.  Makes sense.  They live and feed more in green water. But salmon can also be found feeding  in deep water and up top in those brownish krill filled water, so it also makes sense that they have a broader range of color vision.    So expect that they can see violet through blue, green, yellow, and  into the reds, but best a green.

Salmon vision is pretty well studied, but I am having trouble getting past the paywalls to get the details from the scientific papers.  Usually I can sleuth out a public domain copy, but little joy so far.

BTW- Absolutely nothing on roosterfish vision.  There are hardly any studies of any kind on roosterfish.  They are a commercially unimportant species, and not easy to study.  There was one  tagging study that found that roosters spend  dusk to dawn in very shallow water, and move into deeper water  (lie 30 to 70 feet) during daylight hours.  We should expect their vision to be optimized for that lifestyle.   But I have seen lots of roosters midday in the shallows, especially smaller ones. So...

-J
 

[Dominick]

BTW- Absolutely nothing on roosterfish vision.  There are hardly any studies of any kind on roosterfish.  They are a commercially unimportant species, and not easy to study.  There was one  tagging study that found that roosters spend  dusk to dawn if very shallower after, and move into deeper water  (lie 30 to 70 feet) during daylight hours.  We should expect their vision to be optimized for that lifestyle.  But I have seen lots of roosters midday in the shallows, especially smaller ones. So...

-J
 

They are fun to fish and sure are pretty.  When people ask me what they taste like, I tell them that we let them go because they are too pretty to eat.  I had the most success with rooster fish trolling with live caballito in the morning.  The caballito drops about 6 to 12 inches below the surface and when it is taken by a rooster it results in a wild splash at the surface.  We have used yellow Bombers in the afternoon because the lure dives (I'm not sure how deep). School Buses work popping on the surface.  The hard part about rooster fishing is when to set the hook.  Dominick

[Brewcrafter]

Katie Perry is the only answer     Related to this, in one of my previous lives in High quality commercial printing, the things that we could do with ink on paper, at best, only covered 40% of the actual visual spectrum.  You look at a printed picture of a field of flowers or a supermodel, you would think it looks great.  Hold the photo up next to the real thing - suddenly it looks shabby.  The missing element that we dealt with in the print shop was "saturation", - john

[whalebreath]

....A very common saying is used in the Pacific Northwest. "Use any color lure for salmon, as long as it's green". I've personally caught lots of salmon on many different colors, from 30'on down to 450', and plenty on glow lures, but doubtful the glow had anything to do with attracting them, because a glowing lure usually stops glowing after a few minutes

Strontium Aluminate glows for hours & hours and has helped my immeasurably-I use beads, tape, powder you name it.

Flashers covered in UV tape are also Very Attractive to Salmon.

I tried posting here about electrical charges affecting the Salmon bite but no one was interested.

[Keta]

Black boxes work.