Bass Sense

Remember the monkeys? Not the singing group but the fake diminutive knickknack set? The little guys in plastic, ceramic, china or whatever that were so popular some years back? One of those monkeys was holding his eyes, another his ears, another his nose, another whatever? The significance and idea that little group centered around was senses, not so much the monkey's senses, but those of homo sapiens. Man does see. Man does hear. Man does smell. And so does the largemouth bass. Far too many bass anglers fail to take these important senses into account, and they should do that every time they launch their boat when after this species. Ditto when it comes to the smallmouth. It's natural for fisherman after fisherman to take so many other important factors into account during every fishing day. Like the time of the year and where bass should be holding that day or week. Like taking structure into consideration and how to make one's game plan for fishing that structure, whether it be creek bed channels, or grass flats, or deep hydrilla, or a long, tapering point. Like whether a spinnerbait, crankbait, plastic worm or jig 'n pig are in order for that day, that bay or that dropoff. Like whether dingy or clear water should be fished. But do enough of us think about how a bass will use their senses to perceive the bait we're going to cast? Vision, for instance. Do we reflect before we attach the lure on how we can take advantage of the bass' vision sense? Do we ever consider, at least enough, that a bass might be able to hear that lure we're casting, for better or for worse? And what about smell? Though plenty has been written of late about the bass and its olfactory powers, don't the Doubting Thomas' still number in the hundreds of thousands, maybe even the millions? What follows is intended to convince you that bass do see and how you can take advantage of how they see, and that bass do hear—and how you can take advantage of that sense, that bass do have scenting powers and how you can take advantage of their olfactory senses. 
Vision: No matter what sense we're talking about, it's easy for humans to assume that bass and other non-human creatures perceive through those senses the way we do. With very few exceptions, this is never the case. Realizing that bass see different than humans see can be critical to a sportsman becoming better able to take advantage, as he fishes, of a bass' sense of sight. Hearing and smell, too. With both eyes in the front of our head, we're set up to see especially well at considerable distances like 20 yards, 200 yards and more. In contrast, there's seldom any life-essential reason for a bass to see anywhere close to 20 yards. Many bass, because of the discolored water in which they live, can seldom see more than a few feet. Sometimes it's only inches. Accordingly, over the course of thousands of years of evolutionary development, it's safe to say bass can't see well at all at say 100 yards, while many humans can see well enough at that distance to determine what brand of bass boat might be out there, even the make of motor on its transom. Further, a bass' eyes aren't positioned at the front of their heads. Their eyes are much more to the side compared to ours. So, though they may not be able to see well at a long distance, compared to us, they're able to take in a far, far wider angle of vision because their eyes are on the sides of their head. Along these same lines, because both of their eyes seldom have the opportunity to focus on one target, like we do, bass don't have our binocular vision. Theirs is monocular, an advantage at close range because the bass can see close-range food, danger, whatever, coming from almost every direction. This is why low trajectory casts tend to pay off-so the bass farther down the bank, holding in the areas we haven't cast yet, are less likely to pick up the bait's movement as it travels through the air. That factor is also why we need to be continually working on soft touchdowns of the plug or whatever other bait we're using. Of course, sound and hearing are involved on this point, but so are the amount of ripples created that the bass might see and the unnaturalness of the bait's intrusion, compared to the possible subtleness which could be obtained with the right touch down. More than one scientific study has shown that bass see exceptionally well with regard to colors and many different shades of them. With respect to some colors, bass are even better than humans at perceiving the differences in shades. Not all creatures have what are called rods and cones in the eyes. Bass do. Rods help them perceive objects better in poor light, while cones help bass see well in bright conditions. Scientists have determined that bass see up to 24 colors in the spectrum. The fact that bass see so many colors well, and various shades of individual colors, makes it ever so important to take color into consideration each and every time we select a new lure to tie on. One old school of thought has traditionally centered around the fly fisherman's philosophy of matching the hatch. Essentially, that means selecting a lure color that comes close to matching the predominant food the bass might be feeding on at that time: shad, crawfish, shiners, frogs, whatever. In off-colored waters the philosophy of another school, which has often been preached, centered around a lure color that was extra bright, making that bait easier for the quarry to see. Thus the highly visible fluorescent oranges, reds, the chartreuses and a few others. The most recent scientific philosophy in this context has centered around Dr. Loren Hill's Color-C-Lector. Years of research have gone into documenting what colors bass see best and strike best under varying light conditions. Now all those years of scientific time and effort have been condensed into three color scales. A probe that comes with the Color-C-Lector is simply dropped to the depth you want to fish, then, on the instrument's dial, you read which color bass perceive best and have tended to strike the most at that light intensity level. The probe is a sophisticated light meter that automatically takes into account the clarity of the water, the sun's angle and the amount of brightness the sun is producing at that depth. Immediately, a needle captures all that information and points to the appropriate color you should choose. No matter which of the three philosophies you select, Color-C-Lector, bright colors for dingy water, or matching the hatch, or all three, be certain you're thinking hard about the bass' vision sense-and taking advantage of it. 
Hearing: If your vehicle's radar detector was sensitive enough, it could pick up the sound waves a bass' lateral line emit. For this is how the fish's lateral line works. That sophisticated organ sends out vibrations, then, how soon these vibrations bounce off a nearby object, and the reverberations subsequently return, tells the bass a great deal about what's around him-other bass-minnows-man, the predator, whatever. The bass thus receives a lot of information about his surroundings without even looking. How do you take advantage of a bass' lateral line? One technique is to zero in on where you expect the quarry to be, with a lure which emits sound waves to the bass' lateral line, sound waves which are just so. Like maybe a spinnerbait whose blade or blades revolve so that the sound waves it or they emit will trigger a strike on the quarry's part. Here, a lot of what works centers around experimentation; like deciding which to use, one or two blades, what shape of blades should produce the best results under specific conditions, selecting the crankbait with the perfect wiggle and sound emission for the day's outing, even which trailer to select for the pig 'n jig we want to swim thoroughly that day. The main thing, philosophically, is to inject science into your thinking when it comes to how a bass hears- in conjunction with lure selection. Bass tend to hear the way humans hear in one special way. However, bass don't have ears as we're accustomed to perceiving them in humans. We have that outer ear, some with long lobes, some not so long, but bass don't. Humans also have an inner ear, and we perceive a great deal of what we hear through it. Bass have only that inner ear, but they can hear very well through it. To take advantage of their fine sense of hearing, you should maintain a respectable silence when you're fishing, assuming more success than what you're currently experiencing is what you're after. The silence we're suggesting doesn't center around not talking a lick, but, again, centers more on a basic philosophy. Like making sure you maintain a quiet trolling motor, a boat that doesn't make a decibel more noise than it must, keeping the sounds you make in a boat to a minimum, maybe carpeting your metal bottom craft in that effort. Lures with built-in sound chambers can be effective, too. Usually those built-in rattles are created by small pieces of shot that move about during retrieve. Many are quite scientific, as the size and number of shot are matched to the size of the sound chamber, the result being vibrations which are theoretically matched to the quarry's preference in frequency, frequency that's going to trigger more strikes.
Smell: Few sophisticated anglers have any lingering doubts these days that bass can smell and that smell can be a most important factor to a day's fishing. It wasn't always that way, and even today there are hundreds of thousands of doubters among every-day fishermen. The first company to make a true breakthrough in this realm had the good sense to re-invest a lot of money they earned early on into fish olfactory research. The company was then able to take these scientific findings to enhance their previous claims, that bass have olfactory organs, sophisticated ones that they use continually. The more people discovered about the scientifics of how fish were able to use their noses, the more they bought and used what might have been previously called a magic elixir. But like vision and smell, bass don't perceive odors the way humans do. They have four nostrils, two on each side of the head below the eyes. Bass breathe in via the two lower nostrils, but, of course, they don't breathe in air, they breathe in water. After entering the lower nostrils, the water washes over the olfactory folds. These organs resemble mini trees. Folds are able to extract information on substances in the water, as that water passes over those folds. The folds then send a message to the brain regarding their findings. The water next passes out via the two upper nostrils. Bass and other species are continually taking in water to test it for odors. They never stop. Research has discovered that the size of the olfactory folds, as well as the number of folds, grows as a bass grows. That means a six year old largemouth perceives odor much, much better than a six inch one. You take advantage of a bass' sense of smell by doing a lot of thinking about it. Most professional anglers take a two-fold approach. First, they want to eliminate and/or mask any human or potentially offensive odor that might be on their hands or baits. Second, they want to enhance the lure's likelihood of getting a strike by adding some type of attractant-type odor directly to the lure. There are several theories about eliminating or masking scent. One claims that human odor is something bass and other fish simply shy away from. Maybe it's natural for fish to do that because of man's role as a predator in their lives. Other claims are that some odors are simply offensive most of the time, like gasoline and others which the human nose tends to find over-powering. Several products hit the market a few years back that reportedly reduced or eliminated odors. Their timing was good, since the fish-scent craze was in high gear. Many companies have introduced their own brands of attractor-type fish scents since they first enjoyed such resounding success. Most now offer varied scents for particular species or individual bait smells. So today the thinking angler selects specialized scents for specialized angling circumstances; maybe a shad scent when casting a crankbait that's made to imitate a shad in size, shape, wiggle and color; a crawfish scent when working a jig 'n pig over a rocky shoal; saltwater scent when trolling for bluefish in the briney; shrimp scent on bonefish flies or jigs about to be fished over an attractive looking saltwater flat. 
Summary: It doesn't take an intellectual giant to figure out that bass do perceive through their senses. Three of the most important ones have been covered here: vision, hearing and smell. With only a little thought and preparation you can make the bass' senses work for you, not against you.