Rembrandt

This thread is about research into colors by Lisa Mitchem and training LMB to recognize specific colors. Its NOT what I was looking for and to persist would be tantamount to hijacking. I'll start a more appropriate one as a technical approach to fishing. To act as that bridge making for more easily understood intercourse of technical information not reliant on opinion or experience. I'm having a lot of difficulty working my way around this site. It doesn't seem intuitive and simply contributing something involves a suck-it-and-see approach. If I get it wrong, I can't find how to unpick the error. Maybe its just me. Maybe its the need for everything I write to be approved by a moderator. Can somebody tell me if that need is only a temporary one or if it happens to ALL posts.

Neither over-simplifying nor over-complicating a topic serves anybody's interests. But one can't be dismissed at the expense of the other. Fishermen want to fish and dont have a lot of interest in whether blue is actually a wavelength of 442 nm , 443nm or 444nm. To them, all 3 are blue. Nor are they really interested in whether something has maximum spectral sensitivity at 442nm, 535nm or 700nm. They only want to know if its blue, green or red. Science is study by increments. Color in fishing is the art of "broadbrush". So where is the balance between the science and the art? The balance between jargon of increments and fishing jargon? The science which is of most interest to the fewest and the art which is of most interest to the majority. Where is the bridge between the science and the art? It should be somewhere between the two extremes but it certainly hasn't been evident for a lot of years. Thus confusion among the majority has been the order of the day. My view is that in fishing circles, science has not assisted the fishing community. Science language is one used in conversation with other scientists. Conversation involving science is constructed for its audience (mostly for peer review purposes). Clever conversation. Conversation involving fishing follows similar construction but is practical conversation not clever. So, how does one construct a bridge between the two? Pull the clever scientific audience conversations towards the other? Or educate the "other" in science? There's been plenty of opportunity for the former over the years but the fishing community has relied more and more on experiences gained rather than being educated. One might say that the fishing community has learned and advanced from its own experiences in spite of science and not because of it. I'm happy to try and find that bridge in a modest way. So in bass fishing circles, where is the "bridge" between science and practicality?

There have been two important "misses" by bass anglers, professionals and industry players over the last 50 years in relation to colors in the water. Firstly, the accepted norm that the color red fades out first in lake water was debunked by the US Navy 55 years ago and then by science 27 years ago (and many times since). Yet the fallacy has persisted and caused much confusion in bass angling circles. The second "miss" was the discovery approx 16 years ago that bass eyes do not posses a blue color cone receptor. Bass are colorblind to the color blue. That discovery was before Lisa Mitchem's study. The easier subject to address is the no-blue-cone issue and it also is the one that has had an enormous impact on bass anglers. At this link site ? (rapidtables.com) is a list of 129 colors. Scroll don the page a bit to find the list. These are 129 colors as we humans see them. They ALL consist of various amounts of Red, Green and Blue colors. Humans will see each of these as a completely separate color as the mixture component varies. The most well know of these is the color white. It consists of equal parts of red, green and blue colors. Mix these 3 colors together and we humans (who have 3 color receptors...red, green AND blue) will see them as the color white. We humans will see those 129 colors exactly as per that webpage because we have 3 color receptor cones. Fine so far. However.....what if we humans had only 2 color receptor cones. Green and red. What then? Would we still see those 129 colors exactly the same as we did in that webpage (when we had 3 color receptor cones)? No we wouldn't because 114 of those colors have a blue component in their RGB color mix. What about the color white that we talked about previously (when we had 3 color cones)? It has a blue color in its mix so would we still see white as white with no blue color receptor in our eyes? No we wouldn't. We see that color now as only having equal mixes of red and green with no blue color component. And what color is made up by equal amounts of red and green (but no blue)? Yellow of course. Lucky for we humans that we aren't in a mess in trying to work out colors with only 2 color receptors. Hang on a minute. Don't bass only have 2 color receptors? Yep. Sure do. So how do they see that color that we saw as white previously (with our 3 cones) with their 2 cones? With only 2 receptors (red and green), do they maybe see it as yellow? Yep. Right again. The white hasn't changed color. The bass (with no blue color receptor) just perceive it to be yellow. We humans still perceive it to be white with our 3 cones. Didn't we say a while ago that there were 129 separate colors on the webpage? So how many of them have a blue component in their mix? 114 of them. So that means that a bass (with 2 color cones) would perceive 114 of those colors differently to the way that we humans (with 3 color receptor cones) would perceive them. Bass don't have a problem with colors. We humans do 'cos we have to cope with 2 different color worlds. Ours in a color world governed by 3 color receptors and also in a bass's color world governed by only 2 color receptors. Now can we see the profound significance of the missing blue color receptor cone? Bit more than we thought maybe? Happy to demonstrate how you guys can check this out for yourselves. What we thought was white is actually yellow in a bass's world. Of these, only 15 have a blue component in their RGB color code mix. Only colors which don't have any blue compentsBecause of the absence of the blue color cone, there are

What I'd like to do is have the opportunity to show members how and why the absence of a blue receptor cone in the eyes of a largemouth bass has such a profound effect. Although commenting about Lisa Mitchem's apparent failure to predict the outcome, I'm not a scientist and am ambivalent about her study.