I am less fussy than most serious fishermen seem to be. I use no leader, attach lures directly to my line with a swivel. I believe fish can see the hooks, but placement on the tail and underside front resemble a tail and pectoral fins. That being said, fish bite on many lures that don't necessarily look a lot like fish. I think it's more important that the action, presentation, and possibly flash/color are something that catches a fish's attention.

I guess yeah they can see them, but in the grand scheme, they're not overly scrutinizing if a lure goes by that appears to have a fish like movement. It's life and death in the wild. I think a lot of their psyche is eat it now or possibly don't get the chance to eat again. A rival may get it, or it may be tougher to catch healthier baitfish later- if they can be found.

 

I would agree with some of what you state. The question itself is a bit of a trick question with the object being defining what "seeing" actually is. And I think different fish "see" things differently.

For instance, tuna have exceptional eyesight and are very cautious about things they don't understand. Hook placement in a bait is very important when fishing for them. Bass on the other hand are a different animal all together. Bass are one of nature's evolutionary successes. They can live in both fresh and salt water, are fairly hardy, and feed on wide variety of prey, basically anything they can catch.

We have been fishing with hooks for what, a couple hundred years or so, basically an eye blink in the evolutionary scale of the bass. Nature has endowed bass (and many fish) with highly developed senses, some of which we somewhat understand (sight, hearing) and some less so (latteral line). And the bass have been using these senses for eons.

So their instincts revolve around what they have experienced for all those years and their feeding habits probably revolve around a very specific set of of sensory criteria. Something swims by and if it meets 2 out of 3 criteria, it's food, or something along those lines. So when a plug swims by with the right profile and right vibration or motion, that falls into their instinctual checklist, I suspect they pretty much stop there and don't give much "thought" to anything else they may "see".

Do they see the actual hooks? I suspect they do because their vision is generally considered to very good. But I think they have no instinctual reference point for them one way or another. They simply don't fit on any list they have so they are ignored as non-factors. We like to attribute all kinds of human attributes to fish. We like to think they're smart, maybe because catching them makes us feel smarter lol, but I think it all comes down evolution and instinct.

I think bass can learn and adapt, but I think it's instinctual reaction, not intellectual reasonings, that drive it. I've seen bass under lights hit a bait attached to ande line and get caught. Next cast, the bass run up and turn away at the last second. Switch to fluoro and the same bait will get hammered once or twice more before the bass turn off to it, so they can "see" pretty good. But the trigger that turned them off was line first, then the bait. It never seemed to be about the hook sticking out of the leadhead.

So I think that bass (and fish in general) can see hooks. I just think that most of them have no instinctual knowledge of them, no point of reference for whether they are a danger, or benign like a piece of seaweed. So in effect they don't "see" them.

Least that's what I think.

Have at it.

 

Pretty much agree too. Stripers do seem pretty smart. Where the question was do fish see hooks, I went pretty broad considering varied species. There are some species out there that are far less finicky where I have caught and released the same individual fish on the same set up in the same sitting more than once.