Does color matter this much for walleye?

Vollmer

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JOHN HAYES
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
jhayes@post-gazette.com


JUN 23, 2022 9:25 AM


Lake Erie’s dominant predator spends much of its time chasing food in the dark – at night and at depths that obscure most light frequencies. Named for their odd pearlescent eyes, walleye can distinguish colors in various water conditions and see in shades of darkness that blind their prey


Veteran walleye anglers and fishing guides base strategies on the fish’s evolutionary visual advantages. But scientific research on the species hasn’t kept up with studies of freshwater bass and trout, despite the walleye’s natural range stretching from the Arctic to Alabama.


A recent study at Ohio State University explored precisely what walleye can see in various water conditions. Some of the research confirmed details that anglers have long suspected. In clear water, the study found, walleye will strike white lures or almost any color. When the water is clouded by sediment, they are more likely to go for yellow or gold, and in green algae-laden waters, walleye eyes are best at seeing black.


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Suzanne Gray, a professor of environment and natural resources at Ohio State, researches why and how some animals can adapt easier than others to human-induced environmental changes. She was initially attracted to Lake Erie walleye because of their exceptional visual skills and exposure to annual algal blooms in their spawning waters in the warm shallows of the lake’s western basin. Human-induced nitrogen-rich agricultural runoff causes the blooms, which can grow dense, massive and spread across half of Lake Erie.


Gray recently explained some of her research in a webinar angled for anglers and hosted by Ohio State and Ohio Sea Grant, a research, education and outreach center linked to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.


“From my perspective, I think of individual fish and how they respond to environmental stressors, whether that’s changes in the color and clarity of the water or changes in the temperature of the water,” she said. “How do fish sense those changes internally? Do they then react and respond, and what does that mean across the lifespan of the fish and the community of fish?”


Some rely on smell. Other fish feel disturbances in the water through the sensitive lateral line. The walleye’s eyes evolved as its predominant sense. The bulbous organs find food and avoid predators even through dense algal matting and mud or other sediment from waves or tributaries. The eyes detect movement under high waves and have acuity at water depths beyond the reach of visual light (about 33 feet below the surface of clear water). Walleye rely on sight to spawn, to scan the water during the twilight of dusk and dawn, during starless nights and when a bright moon casts stark silhouettes.


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Some of what Gray has learned about walleye eyes may help anglers make decisions about lure color choices in degrees of water clarity.


“These are very visually dominated fish, so they use vision for a lot of different tasks,” she said. “Then, of course, there’s the human dimension. [Anglers] are likely to spend some time thinking about what lure you’re going to use each time you go to catch fish. In the case of walleye they are visual hunters. They have color vision, they can see in really low light. We know these things. So really understanding what they see under different conditions is pretty important to this recreational angling industry, which is worth about $2 billion a year in Ohio.”


Gray and her research team conducted a lab test to document the basic visual abilities of walleye under various water color and clarity conditions. A phone app was developed and Lake Erie charter captains were recruited to log data noting lure color, water color and clarity as well as clients’ walleye catches during various levels of water turbidity. The researchers used that information to make predictions about the walleye bite when using lures of particular colors under various water conditions. Finally, they tested those predictions in a controlled fishing experiment.


As expected, the initial laboratory testing confirmed that visual perception decreased in water clouded with sediment, and was further degraded in mixed sediment and algae. When the water contained algae only, however, walleye vision reduced 40% as compared with what they could see in sediment. Also, to detect prey in algal waters, walleye needed to be 15% closer than in sediment.


The charter captains’ data showed base lure color success varied by water clarity and color. This part of the research found that white lures outfished other colors when the water was clear. Yellow and gold were hot in water clouded with sediment. But when waters were green with algae, more walleye were caught on black and purple lures.


In the controlled fishing experiment, grad students performed the hard work of fishing in Lake Erie. They logged lure color, water clarity and time of day to test the predictions developed using data from the previous testing. They took six fishing trips in clear water, six in turbid water and three trips during algal blooms. Four people were fishing at a time, each with a different lure color.


“For our experiment we used this analysis to understand if fish preferred any of these four lure colors in a given water condition,” said Gray. “What we found was that in clear water … there was no preference, they would just pick whatever color they saw first, maybe. In sedimentary turbid conditions … given all the lure colors, the probability that the fish were going to strike on a gold lure is much higher. Under algae conditions … when given a choice between all four colors, the fish seemed to prefer black.”


Despite low sample sizes and reduced research in algal waters, Gray said the experiment confirmed that in various water conditions walleye could see some colors better than others, and proved that researchers could predict walleye lure color preferences in various water conditions.


That’s what fishing guides successful walleye anglers do on every trip. But conducted in controlled conditions, the study put some PhD credibility behind knowledge of an important yet understudied game species.
 




CatDaddy

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Does anyone else find it "fishy" that the researcher's last name is Gray in a study about color preferences?
 

eyexer

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I don’t know about other people but I’ve had days where color was 100% responsible for catch “all” the fish for the day
 

Vollmer

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They covered 3 of the go to colors for me. Black, White and gold. My 4th would be chartreuse.
 

WormWiggler

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hammered brass... all day, every day.... might explain my empty freezer and walls, lol
 


svnmag

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I read a study a while back stating walleye most easily detected orange. IDK if detection always equals strikes...

FUN ANECDOTE: Long ago below Darling I kept getting follows and swipes. Usually this was remedied by downsizing the ShadRap: Not so on this day. I noticed a jar of Power Bait Trout Paste in my bag left over from the Hills; the color happened to be Fruity Ass Rainbow Swirly. I put a small hydrodynamic blob behind the lip of "Old Reliable" then banged a large oilfield lesbian for a half can of Copenhagen. After a cleansing piss and mutual check for ticks I nailed an eater or better walleye on damn near every cast. No shit. All C/R. I even upsized for longer casts which only wasted time. All strikes were within 20ft of the bank. I don't know if they turned on because of time of day or added scent. I do KNOW Pard & I were the only ones catching walleye that afternoon/evening and we were asked twice if we were "professional fisherman". No shit.:)


Old Reliable:

images
 
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eyexer

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It’s interesting what color preference for cranks has changed over the years.
 

svnmag

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Bet one could knock this piss out of 'em with this:

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Auggie

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I read a book called High Percentage Fishing. A statistician took a bunch of creel surveys from various states and tried to make sense of the data. This was for bass fishing, but probably applicable to us walleye snobs.

Fishing pressure had the most negative impact on fishing. Essentially, fish weekdays and not weekends. There was not a correlation with moon phases or a dropping barometer. Consistent weather (good or crappy) improved fishing more so than an incoming storm. Black was by far the best color.
 

svnmag

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I'm thinking casting and action would be improved if a plastic lizard's legs curved toward the head.
 

Allen

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I read a book called High Percentage Fishing. A statistician took a bunch of creel surveys from various states and tried to make sense of the data. This was for bass fishing, but probably applicable to us walleye snobs.

Fishing pressure had the most negative impact on fishing. Essentially, fish weekdays and not weekends. There was not a correlation with moon phases or a dropping barometer. Consistent weather (good or crappy) improved fishing more so than an incoming storm. Black was by far the best color.

While I think we all can agree that stable weather for a few days offers a consistent bite, there's no doubt that walleye in particular love a rapidly dropping barometric pressure that precedes a thunderstorm. The problem with this is that you kind of have to put yourself in danger to have experienced it. Back in the day when a person was able to camp on the shores of Lake Sak and just pull the boat up on the beach, I got to often fish that last 15-30 minutes ahead of a thunderstorm because shelter (camper, tent, or vehicle) was just a minute or two away. There were days you would have half a limit of fish after several hours of fishing only to slam the hell out of them for several minutes ahead of danger.
 

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