I used to tie most of my flies with red thread and never gave it much thought (both trout and smallies) but last year went to using a chestnut color that was visually appealing to me. However my big fish success rate was down this past year and it got me wondering why.
A non fly fishing friend says he uses red hooks on his flukes and such and was outfishing his boat partner until his partner went to red hooks also.
This winter I went back to red thread and am tying everything with red…even though what is easily seen is only at the eye of the hook. Still it may look like a gill flash and may spark an attack.
Any thoughts on the theory?
I’ve long suspected that flys with red in them get hit more often, but I have no objective measure of that. I’ve also suspected that because of this previous suspicion, that I tend to fish flys with a little red in them more often. I know I like to tie them that way. 
Al Beatty in his book on rotary vises shows numerous flys with a red butt or red head. He claims it attracts hits. I agree and use a lot of red in tying. Jim
It matters if you BELIEVE it matters. I think whether a fly is successful or not is in some part a function of the faith of the angler, and that somehow your belief in a fly impacts how it appears to the fish. No idea how, but it seems to work.
Red is the first color to drop out as the fly sinks, so if you are talking any sort of deep fishing, the color is probably not a factor, but at the surface, it might be. I use different thread colors to denote different weightings of flies (lead versus nonlead versus unweighted), but have not noticed that flies with red thread fish any differently, for me at least.
I have a friend that works in a sports shop. He loves to tell this story of a guy that comes in and insist that any fishing line that goes on his reel is red, because he read and believes the ads that say it is invisible to fish. The same guy then asks where the red hooks are. My friend asks why he wants the red hooks and he looks at him in disbelief and says, don’t you know fish see those better, it’s an attractor hook.
Now my buddy, who is no young kid, looks at the guy straight in the eye and says: Let me get this straight, the red line is invisible but the red hooks the fish see better?
Still remember a talk by Gary Borger a few years back at one of those fly fishing shows. In order of importance: Fly size, wing style, action or movement in the water, then color. Color is important, just not as much as we all give it credit for.
Now, why do I have all of those different colors of thread? I know it in my mind, but I like many different colors of materials and threads too. It might not be the most important, but there are times when…
Rick
Water absorbs light spectrum waves. The color begins to shift, the deeper in the water column the fly sinks, colors fade, then disappear.
Red, is the first color to disappear, followed by…
Orange, followed by…
Yellow, followed by…
Green, followed by…
Blue, followed by…
Indigo, followed by…
Violet, finally
The deeper in the water the fly pattern goes, more colors disappear, starting with Red and ending with Violet. Red is only visible to a depth of 2 meters below the water surface, before it disappears, first turning to brown, and finally Grey. The deeper the depth, the less color, until everything is shades of Grey (Black).
Another thing to consider is the clarity of the water, if there is any cloudiness cause by algae or organic material containing tannic acid (tree bark), then you might want to silhouette the fly pattern against the backdrop of the water.
Many fish use Ultraviolet wave lengths to find their prey. And you can use the principle of sub ultraviolet coloration in your tying materials to be used for the presentation at great depths. Anyone remember having a poster that you needed to use a black light in a darken room to see the color shift of the colors on the poster?
Fish may be colorful when held in a net after being caught, but in the water those colors are not visible unless you can see in the ultraviolet light range.
~Parnelli
While I don’t disagree with the science of colour loss with depth, many successful flies (or hardware) are a combination of black, silver and red (with possibly some white added). Fran Betters (at least on the flies I got from him) used Fluor. Red whatever the fly. I think it is an attractor, and as long as it can be distinguished from brown (which probably turns gray sooner with depth), I think bright red is an advantage (or at least not a deterrent) until proven otherwise.
Fluorescent colors do not lose their color with depth as do regular colors, tho.
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
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
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