Fluorescent materials

[DonO1]

Allan,
Thanks, That's kinda what I was fishing for- fishing identical patterns side-by-side except for flourescent materials. UN-scientific, but revealing.

Also, since most tiers have access to a UV light for curing UV goo, have you ever shined your flyboxes to see what flies glow, or portions there-of.
I did, and i was pretty amazed at what I saw. If fish see fluorescent, I'm tying under a fluorescent light from now on when using those materials.
I also spent a few hours and went through my materials and selected out everything that was fluorescent and collected them into a box.
For two reasons:
One- to select from a great array of Fl materials, and
two, so I don't mix them unintentionally anymore. A blend of dubbing with non-UN mixed with a 'hot' UV looks sick.
A third reason would be to select the UV brightness factor. They range from cool glow to blazing glow- will be easier to balance glow and color.
And yes, the color can completely change when UV light is applied.

Now how much UV affects a fished fly and fish- who knows. Bright sun, cloudy day, evening shade? Time to experiment.

[malevo]

Don,

Be careful when tying under UV. You can damage your eyes.

M

[Allan]

Don,

Not sure if you realize that I'm the person who received the DVD and flies you mailed out Monday. Thank you. I just watched it and was very impressed (need to watch it again a few times). Will sit down shortly and try tying using some of your techniques. In the meantime allow me to describe the specifics of the situation I experienced and described in previous post.
My friend and I were fishing on the Willowemoc in the Catskills in early June. March Browns were sporadically hatching. He and I were perhaps 10 feet apart and we both were on a 3 foot bank overlooking a deep hole. We both were able to see trout coming up or following our flies. As it turned out, we were both swinging MB wet flies. We could see trout following my fly, not his, and I caught about a handful of nice trout to his 0. We were curious about the flies and compared them. As I recall they were both the same size(10 I think) and similarly tyed. The one obvious difference was the dubbed body. His was typical MB dubbing. My fly had seals fur blended into the dubbing. When we held the wet flies up to the sky, the body of his fly looked like a wet mat and mine was glossy and transluscent. I opened my flybox and gave him one that also had that same dubbing. Did it matter? Well, he began getting follows, takes and caught some trout. I've since dyed some seals fur basic colors and have blended a little into other shades of dubbing. I also try to incorporate this dubbing into dry flies too. Maybe it adds something? Maybe it doesn't? Trout seem to like it or maybe I just have confidence in these flies so I use them.

Allan

[DonO1]

Allan,
Thanks for the reply. And you are welcome on the DVD. I am anxious to hear back from you. Denny speaks very highly of your skills (and you). OOps...did I let the cat out of the bag?

Thanks for the experience too- that is exactly what I was asking for.

I, like you, tend to rely more on observation than on scientific data in some regards. Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking science- I love science. We just don't know what the fish's brain does with the nerve impulses from the eye. I haven't seen the scientific study yet that emulates exactly what a fish sees and what it does not. The scientific charts are great, but they fall short of brain cell programming. Just as our brain reverses the up-side-down image we receive on our retinas, the brain of a fish could make all kinds of corrections for light waves.

That being said, an easy 'non-scientific' way to see is just as your experience suggests. Conduct side-by-side experiments, removing as many variables as possible. There are so many variables to conduct studies for, it would take a lifetime of side-by-side fishing to record everything. Is it motion, color, shade, translucency, UV, size, smell, feel? What triggers a strike, a follow, a curious look, a total ingoring, a spit-out, or a follow and rejection at the last moment?

I'm also interested in time-of-day response for UV (bright day= bright flies)- why? Does an overcast day change things? Does fishing under the lights change with the type of lights being used? So many questions- so few fishing days. That's why I'm hoping the list can pool its resources.

[hap]

So are you going to give us the particulars or are those secret?

I really like the UV Shrimp Pink Ice Dub. I use it straight for scuds and as a "hot spot" on other nymphs. I also blend it with about 40% yellow dubbing for an amber scud and with 80% tan or 80% gray dubbing for more more subdued scuds.

I could tell ya... but there is that other thing...

[DonO1]

Just took some photos. An interesting observation- Might be my point.
When I look at some of the fluorescent colors under UV, I seen a certain color,
but the camera sees a different color under the same UV light.
Could it be that way with a fish?

My Fl materials in natural light and under black light:
Fl MAterials- nat. light-1000.jpgFl materials and flies-1000.jpg

Now my flies under natural and UV light:
flies nat light.jpgFl flies.jpg

[hap]

I did a SBS fly of the week on the "Kodiak Sea Louse" which I tie with UV dubbing almost exclusively these days... In 2011 on Buskin Lake on Kodiak Island we were fishing for dolly varden... five of use along one shelf. Four of us had one of my flies and the fifth had a similar non-UV scud. UV flies were catching fish on every cast and virtually none on the non-UV. I was convinced it was a technique thing and traded rods briefly...

I caught nothing and had no bumps after at least 15 minutes. The other guy took to catching fish literally on every cast. A change in flies and the rod started catching fish just like the rest of us.

For many years I fished the Kenai River every Halloween and used yellow maribou muddlers almost exclusively because they were so effective on huge rainbows. Then one year they stopped working. I did not put together the fact I had bought a new pound of yellow Fluorescent maribou shortly before the muddlers stopped working well. When I found a box of old muddlers I stuck them under a blacklight with the new... There was a huge difference in the glow and the new stuff was simply dull.

Yellow maribou muddlers with good bright materials fish as good these days as they did way back when...
art

[Byron haugh]

Good to see that I am not the only one who believes in a dash of science in fishing.

[DonO1]

Hap- Thanks for the experience. Just what I am looking for.

One thing I'm not sure about yet is why Ice Dub 'UV' colors do not glow under UV light- at least most of them. Some of them are very 'hot' under UV light.

Seems the 'UV' designation is in regard to a slight purple-ish tint of the material in most cases. Has anyone tested 'UVII' yet?

So your successful scud was a UV scud. Was it also fluorescent?

[DonO1]

Hap, was the scud fluorescent UV, or just straight UV?