Researchers have found that Largemouth Bass eyes contain only two different kinds of cone cells: one that is sensitive to green and another that responds to RED. Thus, Bass have dichromatic vision and are responsive to a range of colors that is more limited than the array recognized by humans. Yes, it’s no great surprise that the bewildering multitude of lure colors we see in any tackle shop is designed to appeal to anglers as much or more than the fish they pursue.
This research team also performed detailed behavioral analysis to determine how Bass respond to different color stimuli, and also how well bass can differentiate between closely related colors. In these experiments, groups of juvenile largemouth were trained to attack a target with a specific color (red, green, white, chartreuse, blue or black) and rewarded with a food item when the correct color target was selected. This work revealed fish trained to attack either red or green exhibited a high degree of color selectivity: RED targets were chosen correctly more than 80 percent of the time while green targets were chosen correctly almost 75 percent of the time. On the other hand, bass that were trained to attack blue targets would do so 48 percent of the time, but they also attacked black targets nearly 40 percent of the time. Likewise, bass that had been trained to attack white targets would indeed select white 33 percent of the time, but these fish would also select chartreuse 30 percent of the time.
