What do we ACTUALLY know about what fish like?

In this weeks AT there is a letter in Q&A asking, "Which Boilie colour is best at this time of year". The answer is:

"Water clarity often decides the colour of boilie to use, and when it's clear, carp do hunt on sight. A bright boilie that's easy to see will be singled out far quicker than a duller bait.

This means using yellows, oranges and whites, and the brighter they are, the better! If there's colour in the water, change to a much less conspicuous colour such as brown or olive green, but makes ure it gives off a decent scent to help the fish home in on it.

This is also true when fishing over a bed of boilies and the carp are grubbing around among them"

If the fish uses sight then why force it to rely 'only' on scent in coloured water, why not have a bait that they have a chance of seeing? To the other point... if the water is clear then surely they can see an olive or brown boilie?

I come from a scientific background where evidence, accuracy and repeatability are paramount. I often read information in fishing magazines (or on forums) that is purely based on conjecture and can contracdict itself or other sources. I think in reality we know very little about how fish actually act because next to no proper research is done.

retrobob said:

Water clarity often decides the colour of boilie to use, and when it's clear, carp do hunt on sight. A bright boilie that's easy to see will be singled out far quicker than a duller bait

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And their proof of that is what? I believe sight is one of the lesser used senses used by Carp having much better developed senses to use. just what I think of course i'm no expert.

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retrobob said:

I think in reality we know very little about how fish actually act because next to no proper research is done.

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Entirely agree but having ones own thoughts on things can lead to better catches that may though be down to just doing something different.

I think the answer to your question in the title of the thread is NO

On some days one bait will out fish all others and the next day it will be a different bait

other times it seems as you can catch with a bare hook (I have whilst plumbing up)

retrobob said:

I come from a scientific background where evidence, accuracy and repeatability are paramount. I often read information in fishing magazines (or on forums) that is purely based on conjecture and can contracdict itself or other sources. I think in reality we know very little about how fish actually act because next to no proper research is done.

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I would go as far as saying that some of the information given in some publications is rubbish and would set you on the way to having a bad day's fishing in certain scenarios. They are trying to help and be informative but I guess some ill informed guesswork gets through on occasion and it must be hard to do an article each week when it's all been done before.

It's a great question, but like previous responses, my view is that we know a lot less than we think that we know.

Our knowledge is often based on human perception, for obvious reasons.

Will we ever know the true way that fish think, perceive, behave? Possibly, possibly not.

For too many years I was obsessed with big carp. I fished usually around 60 days and nights each year on a 50 acre lake where I had my own rowing boat. The lake was only lightly fished and the rowing boat gave me the opportunity to check baits and baited areas in the clear water. I found it fascinating.

Tesco used to sell a garlic sausage made by Herta called Red Jack which I used to cut up and keep prior to using in betaine, it was a fantastic bait. I caught a lot of thirties and two 40s on this bait, 44lb 12ozs and 43lb 15ozs. Other species also liked this bait with bream to 14lbs, a 17lb catfish, several tench and even a few eels and pike. It was a dull red colour. The next best bait was tigers nuts fished either over hemp or wheat. Results with wheat were the same as hemp but wheat is much cheaper.

Looking down into the water I found that sometimes all of the bait was taken while other times the carp would be really picky and just eat a particular offering. For instance sometimes all the sweet corn would be taken or all the wheat or all the bits of sausage!

If one believes that pre baiting or conditioning carp to a certain bait works then it also applies that we can train fish to be equally scared of certain baits. I am certain that carp are scared of little round balls (boilies) what ever their flavour or colour and they are also scared of tight lines.

Over the years I have tried all sorts of flavours. I particularly like garlic flavour, you don't catch any more but it seems to sort out the bigger carp. Twenty plus years ago I had a string of big carp to 40lb 12oz on garlic boilies.

Nowadays I am much more interested in trying to catch big roach; still messing about with baits and flavours. Big roach are harder to catch than big carp!

retrobob said:

I come from a scientific background where evidence, accuracy and repeatability are paramount. I often read information in fishing magazines (or on forums) that is purely based on conjecture and can contracdict itself or other sources. I think in reality we know very little about how fish actually act because next to no proper research is done.

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retrobob coming from such a background I would think much of what anglers say about fishing will have you bolting your lab door and hiding under your lab bench.
Nearly every time someone states what they believe to be fact from the best fishing method, the best bait, the best venue, rod, reel, line etc etc you will read a few days later the exact opposite. I have never known such a sport for believing so many myths. Even people at the top of the game so often contradict themselves. I’m sure we’ve all heard the true saying “that most fishing baits and gear catch more anglers than fish”
However if all these dead cert approaches were to be true it would make fishing
a-fish-a- chuck and where’s the satisfaction in that? Mind you after seeing inside fishing pools in Japan I expect the Japanese would like it.

If carp rely on their sight so much to feed, then why do equal amounts, if not more, come out at night?

law said:

If carp rely on their sight so much to feed, then why do equal amounts, if not more, come out at night?

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I feel it could be as much about quietness and feeling secure as bait flavour.

There's also a problem I've noticed with science and angling. It's pretty well established that the colour red is rather effective for salmonids. A red maggot is a better grayling bait than a white one - Oliver Kite could catch trout on a bare hook, as long as it was red; Red Francies salmon flies are a top catcher etc etc. Red is good for these fish, we know this because we've had donkeys years of our own empirical experience proving it and plenty of anecdotal evidence from friends backing it up.

But the fish scientists will tell you these fish have extremely poor colour receptors and cannot easily detect the colour red. Science in angling is **** sometimes.

davethesax said:

retrobob coming from such a background I would think much of what anglers say about fishing will have you bolting your lab door and hiding under your lab bench.

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It does!!

Nearly every time someone states what they believe to be fact from the best fishing method, the best bait, the best venue, rod, reel, line etc etc you will read a few days later the exact opposite. I have never known such a sport for believing so many myths. Even people at the top of the game so often contradict themselves. I’m sure we’ve all heard the true saying “that most fishing baits and gear catch more anglers than fish”
However if all these dead cert approaches were to be true it would make fishing
a-fish-a- chuck and where’s the satisfaction in that? Mind you after seeing inside fishing pools in Japan I expect the Japanese would like it.

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Completely agree, it's crazy... still love fishing though.

I'm a scientist... I doubt science and fishing are natural bed fellows. I'll go on gut instinct over attempting to apply scientific rigor.

I can't prove it, but I feel a close infinity with my natural surroundings at times... call it a sixth sense. I wonder if its our in conscience making sense of weather, conditions, prior experience... and our primeval brain use this information in the same way our ancestors would have needed in order to survive.

We are given scientific claims to support new fads: Red line, flouro line etc... which under close scrutiny are utter nonsense - yet taken as fact!

Regarding bollie colour/flavours... whatever... I wonder if such subtle changes that elicit a 'take' are down to curiosity on the part of a fish. I also think some fish show a higher or lesser degree of 'intelligence'... or rather better survival instincts.

Some fish seem to 'wise-up'... others never seem to pick up on subtle danger signals and account for repeat captures.

Fishing has far too many variables to consider a scientific approach....

chav professor said:

Some fish seem to 'wise-up'... others never seem to pick up on subtle danger signals and account for repeat captures.

Fishing has far too many variables to consider a scientific approach....

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Exactly Prof, though it’s not just the fishing fraternity that believes myths about fish. One of the most believed fish fable is that fish have no memory.
Now where did I put my car keys?

Can an experiment be designed to eliminate/take account of variables?
It would require an awful lot of thought and planning before even wetting a line. Once underway interpretation of results would be susceptible to individual bias, even if you happen to be a scientist.
I think we believe what we prefer to in order to boost our own confidence and that fisherfolk are among the more susceptible to suggestion and superstition.
Fishing for me is more art than science and long may it remain so.

rubio said:

Can an experiment be designed to eliminate/take account of variables?

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It's feasible to control the conditions from pressure, temperature, water colour, diet so you just need to change one of these... and you have a test!

Taking the boilie example you could test the effectiveness of different colours of the same recipe, or you could test one colour, some flavoured, some not and see what happens.

Quite a bit though clearly not not enough, but who cares to know?

Its interesting from the viewpoint of a mechanic/technician while the rest are just commuting drivers and don't know one end of a dip stick from the other.

Sure, colour plays a part, its vitally important but who would know that red is regarded as being the most successful in shallow water that changes colour with increasing depth? Scent is more important than sight and its why flavours work and why real-food extracts and essential oils work better - much better than any man-made 'nature identical'!

Then there nutrition.... well maybe three paragraphs is enough to contend with for the time being, Jonathan Ross is on telly

laguna said:

Sure, colour plays a part, its vitally important but who would know that red is regarded as being the most successful in shallow water that changes colour with increasing depth?

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That's an interesting one Chris and you may have inadvertently solved a problem in my own mind and which Geoff Maynard brought up earlier in the thread about the colour red.

My own thoughts being that any colour is subject to light refraction eg. Snell's Law which I've tried to understand but can't although something tells me it's logic without having to understand the mechanics of it... All things relative subject to third party dynamics?

binka said:

....My own thoughts being that any colour is subject to light refraction eg. Snell's Law which I've tried to understand but can't ....

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One question which could have a significant bearing on this is "Do fish have achromatic lenses in their eyes?". I'm guessing that some biologist angler might know the answer to this.

Okay I admit it, I only watched it cos Kylie was on... definitely not Clare Balding!
Fish live in a different light environment than terrestrial species where water absorbs light so that with increasing depth the amount of light available decreases. The optic properties of water also lead to different wavelengths of light being absorbed to different degrees, for example light of long wavelengths (e.g. red, orange) is absorbed quite quickly compared to light of short wavelengths (blue, violet), though ultraviolet light (even shorter wavelength than blue) is absorbed quite quickly as well.

Some have monochromatic vision (all the colours of a single hue) while others see colour to varying degrees. Carp are the most well studied along with trout who have excellent eyesight and then lamprey also with colour vision (initially born blind) and I think hagfish is well studied too with hags having no cornea or lens? Many fishes indeed do see in colour, some fish see infrared (pike) which from an anglers perspective; suggests to me that a warm bait (rather than a frozen dead bait) would be more easily detected, same as a warm mouthed maggot presumably?

Anyhow, if red disappears first in the spectrum of all colours then its reasonable to question why might it be regarded as the most successful (for some coarse species) and why not some other colour? The answer is that the red bait turns darker the deeper you go so, for shallow commercials for example, it will still be red(ish) and visible at a few feet under.

What about white?
More specifically anyone used Titanium Oxide White?

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greenie62 said:

One question which could have a significant bearing on this is "Do fish have achromatic lenses in their eyes?". I'm guessing that some biologist angler might know the answer to this.

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Quote: "Cones with three different curves of spectral sensitivity have been discovered in man, apes, and fish; the maximums of the curves of spectral sensitivity in man are in the violet, green, and yellow bands of the spectrum. According to the Young-Helmholtz theory, the three-dimensionality of colour vision is explained by the fact that light of different spectral composition produces reactions of different intensities in the three types of cone; it is this that leads to the perception of one or another colour."

As I understand, its basically a 3D interpretation of light that separates into various waveforms. When there is intense stimulation of all the photoreceptors, one may perceive the color white but I read somewhere that white is not easily seen by all fish and concludes why red is sometimes (but not always depending on target species) better?

Here's an expert in this field, sadly not me or my original lost resource file on colour vision and the choices of different lures/baits.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpQTh_tnJ6c

I was reading an article in the carp supplement in this weeks Angling Times comparing 3 types of baits, pop ups, on the deck and one other. The chap does a pretty damn good job of trying to make it a 'fair test', even using that phrase - I think the only thing he could not control was the weather but as far as the angler goes, he did well. Worth a read anyway.