Does line color really matter?

[flyandtie]

i know this has probably been posted before.
and there is probably no real answer but, does line color really matter?
i have always used colors like willow, buckskin, and olive for floating lines because of their drabness. i have a chartruese line on my five weight and im not sure it makes a difference in fish spooking/catching.

just wondering what the thoughts are on this one or if theres some scientific explanations.

i think bright is not great, but i am young and can see a drab line. so for the older people with eyesight failing them fast i bet the bright colors help alot.

[Gringo]

I believe it can make a difference in clear water or skitty fish.... I tend to die mine now.

[Ray]

Nope, line color makes no difference. The colors are only for the fisherman not the fish.

[Warm Water Fly Fisher]

whatever the fisherman can see best is the best choice. i use white, doesn't seem to spook any fish

[Wild One]

I've fished in high mountain lakes and streams where the line color does seem to matter. One particluar example is a time a friend and I were fishing relativley side by side with the same size leader, tippet, fly and pattern. I had flourescent green line, he had white. He caught fish, i didn't. It would be easy to say that it came down to presentation, not line color, but we were both dead drifting the flies or letting the wind push them around. When he started catching fish, I tried to mimmick everything he did. It didn't really matter, so I can only assume it was the difference in line color.

[dudley]

In the most excellent book The Trout and the Fly, A New Approach by Brain Clarke and John Goddard, (1980) they cover this subject extensively
They tested three lines, a white, a brown and a green, above the water, on the water in the window, and on the water in the mirror (the reflective surface area outside the the trout's window of above surface vision)
To make a long story short, They found the the white was less visible above the water, while on the water in the window there was little difference.
In the mirror on the other hand there was a great deal of difference.

In every case, the white fly line was vastly more visible than either the green or brown lines. It lay like a great bright crack in the face of a mirror; and when cast into the mirror, it fell like a flash of white light across the whole field of view

[Jackster]

I'll take any edge I can get.
The only time I use bright lines is for practice casting and teaching and in the salt.
The way I 'see' it, it's not so much when the line is on the water that I worry about, it's when it's flashing around in the air during the cast.
This is the same reason I took 120 grit to my Winstons... NOT!

[Gramps]

In the most excellent book The Trout and the Fly, A New Approach by Brain Clarke and John Goddard, (1980) they cover this subject extensively
They tested three lines, a white, a brown and a green, above the water, on the water in the window, and on the water in the mirror (the reflective surface area outside the the trout's window of above surface vision)
To make a long story short, They found the the white was less visible above the water, while on the water in the window there was little difference.
In the mirror on the other hand there was a great deal of difference.

In every case, the white fly line was vastly more visible than either the green or brown lines. It lay like a great bright crack in the face of a mirror; and when cast into the mirror, it fell like a flash of white light across the whole field of view

So white is bad. The bright green is as good as the brown?

[Bamboozle]

YES IT DOES!!

To me

I like white because I can see it the best in all light conditions and being able to see my line helps me during the twilight hours when I LOVE to fish.

As far as the fish go; on regular sized streams I almost never fish a leader less that 12 feet so I don't worry about my fly line as long as I don't false cast right over their heads. I have caught more than my share of fish on fly lines that are peach, white, yellow, chartreuse, grey, dark willow and olive.

[Normand]

color is probably not what scares the fish but that lousy cast and presentation on the water.

if color was truly a factor, every fly line manufacturer would have figured out by now the ultimate color!


http://www.frontrangeanglers.com/newsle ... ecolor.htm

http://www.midcurrent.com/articles/scie ... color.aspx