About that color thing ...
... as a priority in fly tying / selection. Neil's current article "Let's Consider Perception" in the bi-weekly edition on the Home Page, inspired another experiment in the relative importance ( or unimportance ) of color in tying and selecting flies.
Sometimes it's about the flies - and tomorrow will be one of those days.
Tied a collection of flies based on a productive pattern in a random and wide variety of color combinations, none of which I would normally tie, or even come close to considering if I were really going out to catch some fishies.
But in the name of science ( to the extent that limited anecdotal evidence proves anything ) here are the flies for tomorrow.
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...s/P7170014.jpg
Stay tuned.
John
P.S. One of the really knowledgeable anglers I knew down in the Idaho Falls area, Dr. Harley Reno ( the Dr. is for a Ph.D. in entomology ), when demonstrating fly tying often used to say about some component or other of a fly "Color ?? Yes ..... " and then pick up some odd ball color to incorporate in the fly he was tying.
Size, silhouette, action ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
aged_sage
...Once the fly gets through the surface film, the ball game changes drastically. ...Frank
... color. Generally, I agree with your comments, which happen to pretty much agree with Harley's. One of the examples he used was the "blue damsel". Might as well tie it with a black body because that is what the fishies will see from below.
However, this pattern does not float on the surface, but rides very low with most of the fly entirely submerged, with only the top of the bullethead and the wing at surface level. Thus it should be an interesting pattern for this kind of experiment. Not sure conditions will permit, but I'm thinking about putting on my diving mask tomorrow to take some underwater shots of the fly to show how it rides and how a human eye ( as represented by digital pixels ) perceives the colors.
One of the fun things about fishing this particular pattern is that there is often no obvious take, in the form of surface disturbance which you get with many, if not most, dry flies. It's pretty cool when you see a trout approach the fly and then go nose down with it and not leave so much as a dimple or a ripple on the water. Other times the takes are explosive and all heck breaks loose almost immediately.
The weather forecast is for good - but the river has been a bit fickle lately. Hopefully I'll run into mostly nearsighted, colorblind, dumb, and starving trouts, especially colorblind ones.
John