"Chartreuse chickens?!!"

[WarrenP]

Denny,

Enjoyed your article on your JV hen. Very good information...

BUT...In my mind I can visualize an Olive Chicken, but, Chartreuse!!!

[DG]

I still have dibs on that first chartreuse chicken.

Warren, if you knew where he lived, it would seem much more plausible.

[clyde holmes]

I agree with Warren. Good article Denny. I am also waiting for a pic of that weird chickenLOL

[vargoje3]

Hey if scientists can make a glow in the dark puppy, a chartreuse chicken is a definite possibility.

[TyroneFly]

Two or three years back I bought a couple of JV Hens capes from Denny after asking him what feathers he had that would be good for soft hackle flies. I love the action these feathers produce and when you twitch retrieve the fly really comes alive!

[hap]

Been reading quite a bit about the fact birds and fish see UV and we don't... Saw pictures of various birds we think of as the same in both sexes, like Canada geese and ravens and others, but with UV sensitive film. It does not produce UV colors, as that would still be invisible to us, but rather, compresses the light spectrum into the (human) visible spectrum. It was amazing how different many of the birds are when UV is added to the equation...

All this reminds me of my brief stint as an upper division college basketball player. While I thought I played mean defense and very smart ball it amazed me how fast the competition was. And even though I often was left standing there wondering what happened I still believed one day I would start and do everything and everyone proud.

After an "event" I had a long talk with the coach and it became very obvious, very fast, my inside feed skills were no match for the good my GPA did for the team average. Only then did I realize I was not even seeing a lot of the game. Humbling is not close to the right word...

I feel the same way thinking about how the fish see so much more than we do. We talk of matching wits with a fish... A fish with a cerebral swelling like a match stick... And you have to know they waste a LOT of that on color recognition. Color recognition well beyond our ken. They would not waste the brain cells on it if it were not really important in their World. But they do...

I liked Denny's thoughts a great deal. But the colors reminded me of my Aunt Viv's chicken farm and one of the roosters that suddenly turned brown barred grizzly. Funny how he smelled of Copenhagen... And how my cousin hated that rooster...
art rambling

[JeffHamm]

Hi,

Interesting stuff there hap. I recall seeing a video simulating a hawk's vision, as they can apparently see into infra-red. Adding this to one's vision, and suddenly even I could spot the bunny from 1000 ft! Warm blooded mammals jump right out of the woodwork, so to speak.

Also, if the UV colours are visible to the fish (which I don't know for sure, but let's just suppose), then presumably those colours survive longer with depth. I'm basing that on some of the water depth/colour charts that have been posted here, blue lasts longest, so "ultra-violet" would last longer and deeper.

Now, to take that further, if feathers from Canada Geese have different UV spectrums between the genders, then one could reasonably expect different bird species to have different UV colour patterns as well (is that crow really the same black as the black bird or starling?). Of more importance might be the question of what UV pattern, if any, are being produced by our synthetic materials? Can we really be sure our "peacock dubbing" looks like "peacock" to the fish (do we care since it's also obvious that the synthetic materials catch fish)? Do natureal materials "win" at deeper depths because only the UV colour shows, and the synthetics have none? Or do the synthetics have more?

- Jeff

[Ron Eagle Elk]

After reading many of the really old recipes for flies that stipulated a back feather from a young starling, or an undercovert feather from a hen swift, etc, etc I had to wonder.

Could it be that those old timers had tried other feathers and stumbled on the perfect feather, wool, dubbing that fish could readily see and accept as food?

How many attempts at creating the near perfect fly did James Baillie have before getting the Black, Dun and Red Spiders correct? Why did Greenwell specify certain materials to his Ghiilie when having the Greenwell's Glory dressed for the first time? Was it because he (Greenwell) had tried other versions of the fly and found them lacking?

Are we getting too casual in our dressing of the old flies, for those of us who still use them, substituting those feathers that we think are close enough, and loosing the results of many trials and errors by the fly's originator?

Kind of makes you go...Hmmmmm?