Thoughts on red thread

[fly-chucker]

DG

    Fluorescent colors do not lose their color with depth as do regular colors, tho. 

Materials do not loose their color with depth, the available light changes with depth. An object is the color of the light reflected off of it. If the reflected color is not available (because of depth) then it will appear gray.

As far as fluorescent colors go, if the material is auto-fluorescent (producing it's own light) then the material's color would appear as you see it on the surface. Most fluorescent tying materials do not produce light (except for the glow in the dark ones), so they are going to behave in the same way as non-fluorescent colors.

Kevin

[jeffnles1]

I think one of the key considerations here is at what depth does the water cause colors to shift. As someone stated earlier, the red color shift is 2 meters. Assuming that is correct, this could be why red works in a lot of flies.

A very large percentage of my fly fishing fish are caught in less 8' of water. At about 6.5 feet the red would start turning to a brown or gray right?

I do catch fish deeper from time to time but a lot of my fish on a flyrod are in the range red should still be available.

I use a lot of siver and white for warm water fish and sometimes a bit of red at the head when I'm tying some type of fly that is a minnow imitation, I'll put some red in the head.

Jeff

[James Smith]

For those of you who enjoy a scientic approach to colors and fishing, I highly recommend the book "What Fish See: Understanding Optics and Color Shifts for Designing Lures and Flies" by Colin J. Kageyama. It will give you a much better perspective of the effects of water clarity and depth on colors. Do colors matter when fishing? In my opinion, absolutley YES. Just ask any bass fisherman who is not catching any fish on one color worm and starts getting hits on every cast when he switches colors. On flies, I suspect the impact is somewhat less, but then again, I have every color under and over the rainbow in my tying supplies. The X factor in this discussion has already been mentioned and that is confidence in the fly you're using. I don't understand why this is so important but it is. I have a good fishing buddy who happens to be a better fisherman than I am however there are numerous occasions where I'm catching tons of fish and he's getting skunked. I will actually cut the fly off of my tippet and give it to him to use and let him fish in the same spot I was, immitating my retreive etc. and since he's dubious about the pattern, he gets at the most an occasional fish. I can't explain the X factor of confidence in the pattern you're using, but I sure believe in it.

Jim Smith