Sparse Dressing on large hooks discussion

[Ruard]

Most of my time I fish not for trout so nothing to say about that. For our Roach it does not matter what nymph you tie on your leader: it must litle enough (#12 or14 or 16) and it must have some movement and now I am experimenting wit luminous bads. The water where I fish is murky and 3 meters deep so no light down there.

I fished years ago for grayling and used a dry fly on hook #18 but as big as half the hook and with a hackle for a fly on hook # 22. There is no proove because I mostly don't change when i have found a fly and a system that works for me on that day.

Greeting

[daringduffer]

Sounds like a great project! Let me suggest a variable to you: current speed and turbulence; in other words, which works better in confused, choppy water and which works better in slower pools? I think most of us would intuit that Fly #1 with its "natural" proportions would work better in the latter, where a trout has time to inspect the offering. What I might hypothesize though is that the optics of current seams, ripples and the like might favor the "foreshortened" silhouette of Fly #2 as it comes tumbling down from upstream. Could it be the that long association between the Stewart Spider's "bit o' fluff" and heavy current has less to do with its relative ballast and more to do with how light is bending its outline underwater? Or, if it's not a matter of refraction, could it simply be a matter of velocity and "persistence of vision"? I.e. could the after-image of the "short" fly that's really hauling look more "natural" to that piscine retina than the "real thing?"

Otter,

Great topic for a discussion. I have too little experience to even make an educated guess. I think CreationBear makes it obvious that it is almost impossible to come to a valid conclusion. As Mike Connor would have said; "too many variables". Even when you have a result from your up-coming experiments (great idea) it will be impossible to explain this result in a scientific way. You can get a scientific result from the experiments but the explanation of these results will still be an educated guess. I'm a firm believer of that I know too little, and always will. Still, I want to know everything and that's why I love to have the privilege to meet you on this forum. You offer soo much. Sorry, can't help you on this one.

dd

[Otter]

I am not really looking at understanding it all, but asking questions and teasing out variables that others bring to light can be invaluable.

[CM_Stewart]

Otter,

Saw your original post on the way to fishing yesterday, so I started the day with the only two flies I have that meet your criteria of same fly, one with Tummel length body the other with standard length. Unfortunately, no fish on either. Later changed to a fly that normally does better for me anyway and caught three (the only three I've ever caught in February, by the way).

I find this topic very interesting and am very curious about the effectiveness of minimally dressed flies. I will definitely tie some Tummel length bodies on some of my more productive patterns to test during the year.

I find scotfly's Tummel Grouse & Jasper, along with Roy's Partridge and Orange low water parody http://www.flymphforum.com/viewtopic.ph ... mmel#p6172 and his next to nothing copper wire and hare's mask (which I have caught fish on) very appealing.

Will report back as I get more to report.

[hankaye]

Howdy ALL;

My apologies to Hankaye , and any others that were put off by my inexcusable use off "well experienced" .

i DO NOT SEEK TO EXCLUDE ANY POSTER, AND WELCOME ALL POSTS NO MATTER HOW MANY SEASONS YOU HAVE UNDER YOUR BELT.

Otter and I have exchanged PM's and all is OK.....I also apoligized to Otter as I felt that I had taken an assertive position and I didn't much care for my post eariler in this thread, I liked my answer from the firt part of this conversation on the other thread. I went to change it but ................... , time had expired.

I DO appericiate the Voices of Experience and will send in questions from the Beginner's Box when I think of them....

hank

[CreationBear]

Ha...I agree with daringduffer that there's no way you could ever take into account enough streamside variables to be "scientific," but thinking about this is a lot more fun than doing my taxes this morning. I'd like to refine my earlier hypothesis, then: could it be that trout have different "triggers" depending on the kind of current they're in? In other words, for an "inspecting" trout in slack water, it could be segmentation or a translucent abdomen that seals the deal; a trout in fast water, perhaps, might be "looking" only for, say, a outline of a "thorax" or the flicker of wings/legs as the fly rotates the current. In the latter case--which I think was Gary Lafontaine's principle--a fly that emphasizes (or even over-emphasizes) that particular trigger will draw a strike. A possible corollary: a fly design that draws attention to some other feature that's not being "selected for" in a given instance will be a negative trigger and result in a refusal--even if the fly as a whole is a dead-ringer for the natural.

Of course, maybe that's not the best frame of mind to be in when dealing with the IRS....

[William Anderson]

(smiley) this thread seems to be about 50% substance and 50% apologies and reframing, which is okay too. I'll have to add my apology too. I believe that Mark - Willowhead took my post and the hope of moving past the "trite one-liners" as a response to his post above (which I found none in) and I wanted to let him and anyone else who read that know that I was only reiterating Otter's initial comment "it must be a balanced approach not simply blind faith in the old universally applicable one liner "it does not seem to matter to the trout"". I wish I were misreading that, but I don't thing I am. So I wanted to clarify. I'll try to be a little more careful in our phrasing to avoid these kinds of things, but I really like that everyone feels comfortable enough to point out an offense when they pop up. This is a great group.

I'll try to write on the more substantial portion of this thread in a bit. There is great interchange on the subject and I hope I can contribute in some way.

w

[Otter]

Bringing positive and negative triggers into this is interesting. When you begin to study fly life a wee bit you soon discover that for any given hatch, they will not be like peas in a pod - as in some cases there could be 3 hook sizes between the smaller specimens and the larger ones.

when comparing fly's as in tummel body length and flys with standardish body length( to the hook point/barb) there are 3 possibilities i can think of.

1. The trout disregards the hook and looks at the dressed body.
2. The trout includes the hook as part of the whole package and isn't put off by it.
3. The trout includes the hook as part of the whole package and is put off by it.

Type of water you are fishing , and the type of hatch may also have a large bearing on which of the above happens.

Just some thinking out loud.

[tie2fish]

I'm no expert on what causes trout to eat or reject different fly designs, but I have seen a couple of underwater videos that suggest that they (trout) take a significant number of debris bits into their mouths and then reject them in the course of a day. The frequency with which this happens appears to be related to the velocity and clarity of the water in which they are holding. If a trout cannot, for any reason, distinguish between debris and real food without mouthing it, is it realistic for us to speculate about whether their decision to eat a fly or not is based on the size ratio between a hook and the materials that are fastened to it? Just sayin ...

[kanutripr]

1. The trout disregards the hook and looks at the dressed body.
2. The trout includes the hook as part of the whole package and isn't put off by it.
3. The trout includes the hook as part of the whole package and is put off by it.

I think the above is really the question everyone wonders about. Until trout start talking we can never really know. I just always figured the differences in dressing styles was to accomplish a particular task ie sparser dressing = faster sink rate.


Vicki