A bass sees in two colors, not three

You have three types of color cones. Largemouth bass have two. Researchers measured individual cells in bass retinas and found one cone type tuned to green (~535 nm) and one tuned to orange-red (~614 nm), with no short-wavelength (blue) cones (Mitchem et al. 2019; free full text). Earlier retinal recordings also showed a high sensitivity to red (Kawamura & Kishimoto 2002).

• Red and green stand out. Trained bass picked out red and green targets easily (Mitchem et al. 2019).
• Blue reads dark. Without a scent cue, the same bass couldn’t tell blue from black. Blue still matters, but as dark contrast.
• Chartreuse reads bright. Bass in the study confused chartreuse with white. To a bass it’s a brightness cue, not a unique color. A 1937 study found the same pattern (Brown 1937).

Pond water is a different filter

Pure, clear water absorbs red and orange faster than blue and green (Pope & Fry 1997). That’s where the angler rule about red fading first comes from, and in clear water the direction is right.

Green and stained ponds flip it. Tannins (the tea-colored stain) and algae soak up blue hardest, which pushes the light that’s left toward yellow-green, orange and red. Across 127 lakes, the deepest-reaching light shifted from yellow-green toward red-orange as the stain got heavier (Ahonen et al. 2025). Shallow, algae-rich lakes show orange-to-red light reaching deepest (Reinart et al. 2004). Algae-green water also shifted light toward longer wavelengths and cut it more than muddy sediment did (Nieman et al. 2018). What’s clouding the water matters, too: algae, clay and chalky particles each change light differently (Garcia et al. 2026).

Stained water also gets dark fast. A few feet down in a green pond, you’re working with a dim, narrow, warm-tinted band of light.

Where the spectrum meets the bass

Put those two facts side by side. The light that survives in green and stained pond water leans yellow-green, orange and red, and that’s the range covered by the bass’s green (~535 nm) and red (~614 nm) cones.

That overlap is the idea behind Fish The Spectrum. Each VOJTECH colorway is designed for how it should read at its depth in green or stained water, using hues in the range bass are most sensitive to, plus a strong light-vs-dark outline.

Why “black and blue” works, and where we take it

In murky water, the pros say “throw black and blue.” The research backs the logic: blue reads dark to a bass (Mitchem et al. 2019), so black and blue makes a strong silhouette. In Lake Erie walleye charter data, black was the most successful lure color in algae-green water (Nieman et al. 2020, walleye, not bass).

Turbidity makes it harder for a bass to find food. In tank tests, every bass caught its prey in clear water, but only 15% did in very muddy water (Huenemann et al. 2012). Murky water can raise or flatten the contrast between prey and its background (Utne-Palm 2002). So outline and contrast do a lot of the work.

Black and blue is a good answer. It’s also one-size-fits-all. We keep the contrast, then design the hue for the depth and the water.

Color is one factor

We’ll say it straight: color isn’t magic. When researchers rotated six soft-plastic worm colors for largemouth, catch rates came out about the same across colors, though the bright colors caught somewhat bigger fish (Moraga et al. 2015). In a large controlled test on perch, fluorescent lures didn’t out-catch matched regular ones (Radinger et al. 2026). Light level also matters. Bass fed well from daylight down to moonlight in one study, but far less in total darkness (McMahon & Holanov 1995).

Where you fish, how deep, and the bait’s profile, vibration and fall all matter as much as color, or more. That’s why every VOJTECH listing calls out all five:

Two lines, built for the depth

There’s no deep line, because most ponds are 10 feet or less. Every colorway carries a depth + water label:

Lake series coming later.

Quick clarity check (angler rule of thumb)

Lower your bait on a short line and note where you lose sight of it. Scientists use the same idea with a Secchi disk. Rough angler cutoffs: gone within ~1 ft is muddy, ~1–3 ft is stained or green, and more than ~3 ft is clear. In muddy water, try a MID-DEPTH color even in the shallows.

Our honest status

These colorways are designed around the published science above. We don’t claim they catch more fish. We’re testing every colorway in Dallas ponds, and we’ll post the results, good or bad, on Instagram @vojtechfishlab. Camera view, not a bass’s eye.