Where do they go? fish

[liketrolling]

this is not mine found it on the internet.  but think about it a lot.   


So you launch at 'O' dark thirty and get your stuff in the water and wake 'em up, catch some and as the morning goes along and then all of a sudden; hey where did the fish go?
It seems as if they disappear.
What is your theory?



For the two cents that it's worth my theory is that trout as well as other fish are programmed to feed heavily at first and last light because they're less visible to predators as well as their own prey. Then as the sky brightens their is a transition in eyesight from night to day vision that takes a while. Trout and other fish have lidless eyes and a fixed pupil diameter, so they do not have the ability to adjust to light change as quickly as our eyes do. Rod cells in their eyes used for night vision literally migrate to the back of the eye for protection from bright light while cone cells for daytime color vision migrate to the front. This can take a while. It seems logical that their eyesight is less effective during this adjustment, so they probably lay low for a bit until they can see well enough to easily catch prey and safely avoid predators. The same transition happens at dusk. My experience has been the bite shuts off completely like clockwork especially in the late evening. My morning experience is similar, though then the bite seems to shut down more gradually, not

instantaneously like the evening bite does.

[RockyRaab2]

Or, they quit eating for the same reason we do - they're full.

[stan55]

Depends on species. Crappie and walleye turn on late evening and bite continues until well after dark. When I lived in the midwest we'd fish pike and bass during the day and then switch gear to target walleyes as sun set. Studies have shown it takes about 30 minutes for fish to adjust their eyesight and that predators adjust quicker than bait fish. Evolution at play. Other factors such as cloud cover and waves can also effect fishing conditions. You can catch walleyes at midday with a good cloud cover and the infamous walleye chop. Also a lot of truth to full theory. For example big pike and muskies usually feed for about an hour and then don't need to eat for a few days. Hence the 10,000 casts. However a lot of big fish have been caught with full stomachs. As a kid my grandfather caught a nice musky and it had two walleyes over 20 inches in its stomach. It still comes down to location, depth and lure selection to catch fish all day. But prime hours continue to be early and late in the day.