In short, the answer is YES, Bass do see at night!

They actually have excellent vision at night due to having much denser sets of light gathering rods than we do, but they do not only use their superior vision to track their next meal.

They also rely on other senses such as their inner ears to track a potential food source from up to 200 yds away. This is due to the fact that water is an excellent conductor of sound and travels for quite a distance. Up close Bass use their lateral line that will tell them what is potentially tasty and moving their way.

When fishing at night black is probably the best color choice. While this seems to go against everything we would think of as far as visibility is concerned in our own senses for the Bass this makes a lot of “sense”.

When the sun sets and the water turns dark the Bass’ eyes go through a change. Much like human eyes will dilate in the dark to let more light in the Bass have another trick up their proverbial sleeve.

The rods in their eyes move to the front of the retina while the color receptors recede. This in turn enhances the Bass’ light gathering capabilities while color sensing diminishes. Since black is the densest color it will provide the best visual target when paired with the light surface and night sky.

Now that you know they can see, how do you catch them at night?

The Bass feeding activity increases at night as we will point out it is also very dependent on the surface temperature of the water. According to studies on Summer Bass feeding habits the following “guide” is said to be true.

• When surface temperature reaches 70° and stays there about 50% of active feeding occurs at night.
• When surface temperature reaches 80° around 75% of active feeding occurs at night.
• When surface temperature reaches 90° around 90% of active feeding occurs at night.

Biologists will tell us that Bass feed somewhere around 10 hours of every 24, so presumably at 90° they will be doing 9 hours out of 24 feeding in darkness.

Now that we have that out of the way where do you find them?

Simple. If you have spots on your lake that you are familiar with and they have produced during the day visit the same ones at night.

Telemetry studies show that most Bass do not travel far from their home territory. During the day they will hunker down close to cover in deeper water. At night they will move in shallow to feed.

If you are not familiar with the body of water here are some tips once you look at the bathometry of the environment.

• Try the spots where there are drop offs from the shallows. If there is cover like grass there as well, even better.
• Long gradual sloping points are great for producing larger than average Bass at night. Also look for a tapering point that drops off either side is great as well.
• Never count out lighted docks as another great spot for catching that big girl. Any places that are close to deeper water are statistically going to be your best bet for netting a huge night time Bass.