Do fish see colour?

[tommo666]

Had a strange session yesterday. Went to a spot where it's normally a bite a chuck, but things were slow. Did get some quality Roach and a 1lb.5 Perch. Funny thing only red maggot worked. Normally the Roach here go mad for bronze especially with tumeric added. Today only red would work. Single red, double red, red and bronze, red and white, but it had to have red! Even sillier, I was fishing another rod with two large lobs on a size ten with a red maggot to hold them on the hook. At some point the lobs must have been nicked. I caught the smallest Roach of the day to the single red maggot on a size ten!

[wunnus]

Most def' YES

I would never be without reds for rudd and perch.

 

On one particular stretch of a river I seem to catch best with bronzes, yet nowhere else do they seem to be as successful.

[tommo666]

May just have been the day. Bronzes are normally best at this venue!

[DJMCJERICO]

I hope so with the amount we spend discuising our takle

[medwaygreen]

It was probably a Red letter day

[Andy Macfarlane]

Mr.Burke will probably give you the information you require better than I can.

Perch for instance, have an extremely high concentration of red sensitive cones in their eyes, hence their willingness to grab all things red and moving.

Pike seem to be highly attuned towards reds and yellows, so to answer your question, yes fish do see colour.

Whether or not they perceive colour in the same way we do is another matter but it would seem there is little difference in the makeup of the eyes of fish and humans.

[Ken L]

The males of any number of fish species are brightly coloured.

If this were camouflage, then it would be logical to assume that both the male and the female would share the same colour advantages. They don’t so the colours must be there to enhance sexual success which means that other fish must be able to see the colour.

 

I believe that many freshwater fish can see much further into the red end of the light spectrum than we can so it’s fair to say that they don’t always perceive colour in the same way that we do. A side effect of this is that they can also see much more clearly in turbid water than you might expect – just think about Mr Hunt catching Barra from water the colour of cold tea.

[Steve Walker]

Not forgetting the best-known reaction to colour: sticklebacks!

[chavender]

there is research that suggest that fish are colour blind and they only see a small selection of the colour spectrum and they mostly see shades of gray,and their eye's are only capable of seeing short distances clearly after this everything becomes shades and the fish only perceive this as movement of dark item against a lighter background (silhouettes)the colours that they do see have a higher light refraction level like silvers ,golds ,yellows and red in various hue's and situations other colours seem to be neutral and possibly appear as shades of gray colours like brown ,green and blues & purples ect,game fish Salmonidae (Salmonids) do however seem to have hightened vision and are able to distinguish more colours than their coarse counterparts

 

now in nature the colour red normally signifies danger but with fish(and sharks)it stimulates feeding.after all it's the colour of blood and as fish are cannibalistic by nature it tends to getthem going.

 

camouflage therefore is useless as at most what fish will see through surface water is silhouettes against a lighter sky ect which is why fishing on a dull overcast day is better than days when it's bright and sunny and any shadows(pole)falling on the water will spook the fish and sky lining is detrimental to our sport.

 

 

i hope this helps clarify things a little

[Russell Fitzpatrick]

blue is supposedly a good colour in deep water,cant explain why!