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