Fly colours

[Mike Connor]

Since a couple of people asked;

FLY COLOURS

Over the years, I have thought a very great deal about this, and also read as much about it as I possibly could. In many cases the so called "trigger" effect of a certain fly was known, but why it worked was not. There are a number of flies, like the Orange Quill for instance, which I already mentioned, where the reason for the special effectivity under certain circumstances only became known by accident.

It may work under other circumstances, but under the specific conditions where the spinners are lying in the film and glowing orange against the slanting evening sunlight it is deadly effective. These are cases where the reason is apparent even to human eyes and perception, once it is known. Until it is known, it may simply not be apparent. These "accidents" are of enormous potential, as the reason for one certain thing may well also be the reason for other things. Since I started using orange hackle, overdyed black, for many terrestrials, I have been very considerably more successful when using them. Adding some orange in some way to many flies, including various wet flies, has also proved successful. In this case, the reason for the effectiveness is only visible when one is actually looking for it.

If one holds such a hackle up to the light, then the orange "glow" shines through the hackle. The effect is more or less identical to the effect one sees when looking through the chitinous apparently solid dark exoskeleton of many terrestrials, and other insects, including many aquatics. The colour orange is indeed practically a universal constant of chitinous insect bodies, under certain specific conditions. Although in the vast majority of cases, it is by no means apparent.

Countless words have been written about what trout see, and how they may see it, some are interesting and useful, but after having read a very large number of these, I still often revert to my own pet theories on this.There is no way to know what a trout actually perceives, but it is often quite simple to find out what one may perceive oneself, given the right conditions for doing so. Many such conditions are by no means obvious. Of course, once somebody has indeed conclusively correlated a certain appearance with certain conditions, and a certain effectiveness, it all seems so remarkably simple. As indeed the case of the orange quill very lucidly demonstrates.

It is my contention that the same applies to a large number of things. Chartreuse Clousers for instance. We don´t know why a Chartreuse Clouser should be so universally effective, but we know it is. Disregarding for the moment that one reason why so many fish are caught on them is that there are thousands of people using them all the time, there must still be some specific reason for them being more universally effective than any other colour chosen more or less at random. One theory here is that they are extremely visible. So are other colours, so that can not really be the main reason, although this is indeed possible. They must have some specific property or properties which makes them more attractive. The "jigging" or other similar action is also known to attract fish of itself. Even a lump of metal or plastic will take fish when worked correctly in such a fashion, as it gives the illusion of life. Especially correctly tied sparse Clousers, are even more effective. Why should this be so?

Whatever the reason, or combination of reasons for the success of such flies, it is still not known. The fly was tied more or less on the whim of its inventor, without knowing why it would work, or even if it would work. The results were almost certainly far beyond his wildest hopes and expectations. But still nobody really knows why. I firmly believe that we will some day know why, and indeed be able to use the knowledge specifically for other things.

Back to the orange quills again for the moment. In many cases, I think that positive triggers are important ( only in the sense of making flies look more like the natural and not "triggers" as such!), but I also think that the absence of negative triggers can be even more important! Many of the terrestrials and other flies I once dressed and used, were dressed with natural black hackle. I caught fish on them, but not as many, and especially on dry flies I had a great many refusals. Presumably to wet flies as well, but this is of course a very great deal harder to detect. Nevertheless, I projected my results on to my wet flies as well, and it works very well. Some were dressed with dyed hackle etc, although I usually tried hard to avoid this. Results were mixed to say the least.

Only after a long time playing around, reading, studying, watching fish turn way from certain flies more often than from others, I began to take far more notice of the basic properties of my materials. Although I fondly imagined that I had been extremely painstaking before, this was apparently not the case. As we have seen, and can easily prove at will, many insects have an orange glow when viewed against strong light. Normally, just holding them up to the light on any given day suffices to show this. I started doing this with many of my flies and materials. One or two things became fairly obvious after a while. Many of the flies tied with natural black hackle, contrary to traditional and other widespread opinion, which said that natural materials were superior to dyed materials, were refused.

Black hackles with a touch of brown, which also shows orange against daylight, especially greenwell, furnace, and similar hackles, were refused far less often. Cree and similar broken hackles were very rarely refused, grizzle hackles combined with brown hackles were also very rarely refused, and wonder of wonders, orange or light brown hackles, overdyed black, seemed to be refused least of all! If one studies most natural black hackles against the light they are not black at all but anything from dark grey to dark blue. Many dyed black hackles also have a bluish cast. These hackles are often refused by fish. The flies look identical in the box and in reflected light but against the light, there is very considerable difference. This does not of course apply to all flies, but to a pretty fair number. It also obviously applies to wet flies as well.

The translucence is present in all the flies, but some of the flies have the wrong colour of translucence, and thus are a negative trigger, or so different in appearance that they fall outside the fishes target image, and are thus refused. Sometimes, indeed quite often, solid coloured flies will work alright, and at other times poorly or not at all. Flies with the right translucence colour, and of course the other general attributes rerquired, work practically all the time! There are also one or two specific flies, which show similar though different characteristics. One such group, is flies that are translucent green.

Having tried a number of solid green patterns for imitating some small green caterpillars which were very prevalent at certain times on many trees on one of my home waters which were taken avidly by the fish, some of which caught fish and some which did not. I decided to ignore everything else first, and concentrate solely on reproducing this green translucence. The "appearance" of translucence, achieved by using clear waxed bright green silk worked quite well, but was still often refused.

Actual green translucence, achieved by winding a bright green dyed grizzly hackle along the body, and then clipping it short, was hardly ever refused, indeed, so rarely, that the occasions when it was refused could be put down to some other error of presentation. The same applied to chopped silk dubbing, and to seal fur dubbing. Oddly enough, one of my major dubbing standbys failed badly, namely dyed ( white) hare belly fur. It just did not work anywhere near as well as the others. Greatly encouraged by this, I decide to try larva lace, and a few other completely translucent materials. They were refused every time!!!!!

I tried these "green" experiments for a number of years, but always came to the same conclusions. The "hairy" "fuzzy" translucence was infinitely superior to the actual translucence of plastic etc. It may well be that this also provided miniscule movement, which the plastic did not. Although this failed to explain why the hare fur failed, perhaps it was "too mobile"? These are just a few thoughts on the matter, and my ruminations on these and other things are ongoing.

TL
MC

[CreationBear]

A terrific thread: I'm curious, have you ever tried overdying a naturally black material like starling? One of my region's "killer" flies is Hugh Hartselle's "Smoky Mountain Black Bird," which I've been told uses yellow-dyed starling as a hackle--interesting to know if it's the hackle color or the increased contrast in the tips of each fiber that makes it viable.

Otherwise, I've also been obsessing over trying to match our Little Green Sallies--an important "sporadic" hatch on these infertile freestoners I fish--they're such a hallucinogenic green, I've thought of pulping some chartreuse silk floss for dubbing.

[Mike Connor]

A terrific thread: I'm curious, have you ever tried overdying a naturally black material like starling? One of my region's "killer" flies is Hugh Hartselle's "Smoky Mountain Black Bird," which I've been told uses yellow-dyed starling as a hackle--interesting to know if it's the hackle color or the increased contrast in the tips of each fiber that makes it viable.

Otherwise, I've also been obsessing over trying to match our Little Green Sallies--an important "sporadic" hatch on these infertile freestoners I fish--they're such a hallucinogenic green, I've thought of pulping some chartreuse silk floss for dubbing.

Yes, I use dyed starling and other stuff for a lot of things. It is not really black, more a dark smoky grey. The "sheen" caused by overdyeing also makes a difference. The "metallic" sheen on some feathers is not pigment but the result of thin film interference. Some info on that;

http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/15.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_interference

Using dye one can of course only alter the colour of the pigment but this also has subtle effects on the film interference. Film interference is ( partly) the same phenomenon that causes insect wings to shimmer in colour, but makes the colours permanent;

http://arthropoda.southernfriedscience.com/?tag=fly

TL
MC

[Mike Connor]

This, by the way is also my basic theory why fish will take some flies under bright conditions, and not in dark conditions, and also of course why they take some flies in dark conditions and not in light. The wing colours are only visible under very specific conditions, and brightest against a dark background, ( as the photos in the previous post show). This has nothing to do with UV light or anything like that, it merely requires a darker background for the colours to appear. Some feathers have similar properties. I am still researching this. The thin film interference on starling feathers being one example.

That some iridescent feathers are much more effective for various flies is known, but not exactly why, I think this is at least partially the answer.

TL
MC

[CreationBear]

The apparent color of this wave is determined by membrane thickness and the angle at which it is viewed. These insects stabilize the resulting wavelengths over a broad range of viewing angles by incorporating ridges or spherical cellular microstructures in the interference membrane mechanism, eliminating the unstable iridescent effect. This results in permanent, non-iridescent color patterns that can diversify via evolutionary processes… and diversify they have!

Ha...that is taking "matching the hatch" to a whole 'nother level. Great links....

[Mike Connor]

The apparent color of this wave is determined by membrane thickness and the angle at which it is viewed. These insects stabilize the resulting wavelengths over a broad range of viewing angles by incorporating ridges or spherical cellular microstructures in the interference membrane mechanism, eliminating the unstable iridescent effect. This results in permanent, non-iridescent color patterns that can diversify via evolutionary processes… and diversify they have!

Ha...that is taking "matching the hatch" to a whole 'nother level. Great links....

Basically just trying to figure out why some things work well under certain circumstances and poorly or not at all under others. I know that "UV light" has been postulated as being responsible for many things but I never believed it, it's not logical and does not fit known facts. The interference colours do fit the facts. The main difficulty now is in correlating various interference colours to various fly wing colours. I am fairly confident that this will explain why starling for one is so effective under various circumstances, and also how to improve that effectiveness, but this takes time and work of course.

May also show why some mottling is so effective on flies that appear to have "clear" wings;




http://arthropoda.southernfriedscience. ... -wings.jpg

TL
MC

[Mike Connor]

Some more links;

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/668

http://skepticalmoth.southernfriedscien ... -press-xv/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notro ... eir-wings/

TL
MC

[Mike Connor]

You can get the full PDF here;

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/668.full.pdf+html

TL
MC

[Otter]

If this is relevant, when looking at samples we need to look at them from above, from below against light and also against a dark background.

One thing that immediately springs to mind here is that it would add credence to the obsession that many Irish Lake fishers have in the vast range of hues of hackle and seals fur employed in their wets. I seen a dubbing box some time ago that contained about 18 shades of green olive - he had similar boxes for yellow olive and brown olive and 2 boxes for his clarets - i honestly believed him to be crazy.

It may also go some way to explain the effectivesness of Irish bumbles with their mixed palmered hackles.

Big question is , for river flies - are there possible advantages in using mixed, sparsely hackled game and hen on stewart style spiders or using touch dubbed silk of 1 to 2mm staple with the hackle wound through it.

[Mike Connor]

I'm pretty sure it's relevant, these colours are permanent, species specific, and obviously recognition points for the flies, so why wouldn't they be recognition points for the fish as well?

Also, I think this explains why various "prismatic" flies over the years have worked so well. Your point about the mixed hackles is well taken. I am still struggling to obtain relevant specimens of various flies so that I can check the colours. I only have a few up to now. Any dark background works, especially green. The main point being that too much light from "behind" the wings hides the colours, ( at least to human eyes, obviously the insects can detect them, and presumably the fish too). This would imply that some things would only work well in low light conditions and against a dark background. The various mottling is also very apparent on some wings, and my personal experience is that "broken" coloured hackles work best of all on many flies. It fits with so many things that I am convinced it contains the answers to a lot of questions. The fact that it has been ignored, ( or simply unknown), by fly-dressers, ( although it was known to but largely ignored by biologists for quite a while), is also interesting.

Have to wait and see if this leads me to any concrete conclusions on various matters but I am pretty confident it will lead to some. There are reasons for everything but they are not always apparent. At the moment I am mainly guessing about some things. Time and investigation will tell.

There must be some advantages to taking this into account, one merely has to find out what those advantages are. I am primarily interested in why some feathers, ( especially various iridescents), work so well at times, and am convinced that this is not just coincidence, in view of the fact that the effects are caused by the same basic phenomenon of thin film interference. If one can correlate some feather iridescence to certain insect wings then that is a massive step forward.

TL
MC