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Anglers whose hearts pump brine are left with a choice much like that of a perspiring child trying to pick one of the innumerable snow cone flavors during the heat of summer. Candy-apple, grape, plum, lime and strawberry all prompt secretion to the human pallet while being the preferred shades of coastal pluggers. Which ponders the question: Do fish see underwater what humans see above the surface?
Like human eyes, fish eyes have a cornea, iris, lens and retina full of rods and cones. These rods and cones give rise to the notion that fish see colors since vertebrates use these color receptors to distinguish all facets of the color spectrum.
Fish eyes are perfectly spherical, which enables them to see underwater due to a higher refractive index that helps them focus. Their round lens is much denser than a human lens, reflecting the heavily refracted light onto the retina to focus clearly underwater. Fish focus by moving in and out, instead of stretching the lens like humans.
In humans, the cornea is not as good at bringing light to focus underwater as it is on land. That is due to refraction, which is the changing of direction of light rays from one medium to another. Normally, light passes from air to the fluid in your eye. However, under water, the light passes from fluid to fluid. Refraction does not take place nearly as well in humans under water. Focusing is difficult and objects appear distorted or as a blob. Hence, if you want to see what a fish sees, put on a pair of goggles.
Choosing the best color for your excursion should emulate what the fish are feeding on during the particular season. If white shrimp is on the fish’s menu, try something in white or glow. If summertime brown shrimp are filtering through the bays, pumpkinseed or smoke colors work well. When the buffet consists of fin fish, a light-colored bait with a dark back closely represents a mullet, piggy perch, croaker, shad or glass minnow.
At night, in low light conditions, or in dingy, off-colored water, dense colors like red shad, black, purple and blue cast a shadow that hungry fish intercept. The ideology is that these colors provide a distinct profile when silhouetted against the lighter backdrop.
Red is the most common color used by artificial afficionados along the Gulf of Mexico. Anglers prefer red lures in very dark or stained water because red is the last hue to disappear in deep, dim waters.
With clear water and sun overhead, go with light, translucent colors such as glow, chartreuse, hologram, motor oil and fire tiger green.
Though vision is vital for fish to seek food and refuge, a fish’s own eyes can give its location away to larger predators. There is no mistaking that big fish eat their prey headfirst. The eye provides a target in which hungry assailants aim with mouths agape. Game fish use the eye of their prey like an archer uses a bull’s eye target.
A brown or white shrimp is a popular creature in our bays and oceans. A shrimp’s eyes are its demise, and a glowing mark for glutton snook, redfish, trout and tarpon.
Eyes are also used as an illusion. Look at the dot or multi-dots on the top posterior portion of a redfish. The black oval is not there for aesthetic purposes – it is a pseudo-eye to elude predators.
Redfish are ocean spawners. Though they spend their juvenile days growing in the friendly confines of bay estuaries, by age four, the remainder of their adult life is spent in the Gulf of Mexico. Sharing these waters with the wolves of the sea like sharks and barracudas is a toil for survival. Reds use the dots on their tail as a mimicking eye. They have a better chance of living if an adversary swipes a chunk of tail instead of a chuck of head.
Artificial bait manufacturers are cashing in on the lure of the eye. Black, red, chrome and chartreuse eyes make up the marketing ploys of over half the topwater and subsurface imitations on the marine market.
I guess you could say the eyes have it.
Bink Grimes is a freelance writer, photographer, author and licensed captain. Contact him at binkgrimes@sbcglobal.net or www.binkgrimesoutdoors.com