Fly colours

[DNicolson]

I think I'll try some orange and yellow bodies blackened with a pen.
From the look of your pictures above, the conventional ideas about fly colours
need revision.

[Mike Connor]

Some differences are quite amazing and obviously affect how the fish react. Quite a while ago now I was baffled by some fish taking some bluish black metallic coloured flies. They wouldn't take my offerings made of black ostrich herl and blue lurex, much like a housefly. Ask anybody what colour a housefly fly is and they will tell you it is black.

Really? here is a backlit housefly on a white background;



From http://www.phocus-on.co.uk/forum/viewto ... f=3&t=7880

This is what you see in reflected and only partially backlit light;



http://diptera.info/forum/viewthread.ph ... &pid=79912

I eventually got a few fish on light brown flies with a yellowish body ( Actually cow dung imitations) which looked nothing like the flies the fish were taking, in reflected light, but were a good imitation when backlit!

What you see will be even darker in low light and against a dark background.

http://ngn.nu/Bilder3/080904_DSC03828_F ... 4_w800.JPG

Stronger translucence occurs in stronger light. If you use a material that has similar properties under similar conditions, then it might be OK. If you use black ( or similar ) non-translucent material when the translucence colour is orange, then it wont work. In that case you would have to use orange material to SIMULATE the orange colour of the translucence!

Hope I made that clear enough?

TL
MC

[Mike Connor]

By the way, this also explains why some flies work well in dull overcast conditions and very poorly or not at all in bright conditions. Is probably also the cause of the old adage "A bright fly on a bright day and a dull fly on a dull day". This actually applies to a lot of flies. Their appearance depends on the prevailing light conditions.

If you can find a material which behaves as the flies do in variable light conditions, and some translucent dubbings and hackles are good examples of this, then your flies will be much more successful.

That some small black flies are often regularly successful is probably because they are subject to little or no variation in terms of translucence. Mostly the fish will see a silhouette.

There are obviously a lot of variables involved here but the right materials can go a long way to easing some difficulties.

TL
MC

[daringduffer]

By the way, this also explains why some flies work well in dull overcast conditions and very poorly or not at all in bright conditions. Is probably also the cause of the old adage "A bright fly on a bright day and a dull fly on a dull day". This actually applies to a lot of flies. Their appearance depends on the prevailing light conditions.

If you can find a material which behaves as the flies do in variable light conditions, and some translucent dubbings and hackles are good examples of this, then your flies will be much more successful.

That some small black flies are often regularly successful is probably because they are subject to little or no variation in terms of translucence. Mostly the fish will see a silhouette.

There are obviously a lot of variables involved here but the right materials can go a long way to easing some difficulties.

TL
MC

I truly enjoy this topic! I wonder what dubbing colour/ material would be a wise choice for an ant pattern. Suppose hackle should be dark furnace/ C-y-B?

dd

[Jim Slattery]

Jim Slattery wrote:But wouldn't be advantagious to use a material that has UVa reflective and/or absorbing/transmitting qualties, when said material IS right for the human perception , such as color and texture to create the desired effect anyway?

Humans can not perceive such qualities without technical tricks, and there is no way to know if or how trout perceive them, so how are you going to know what to use? There is no way.

So you are saying that if you have a black light , and you have selected a material that matches what the human eye sees in color and it works for the effect you want to create , expsosing the material to the Black light shows that the material is UV reactive, you would not use it? That this is Trickery?

Many natural materials such as fur and feathers reflect and or absorb/ transmit uv light. Obviously this is a relatively new scientific application to dressing trout flies, there is still much to be learned and discovered. Again if all other aspects of a material being used fit the human eyes criteria of "matching the hatch", which as you well know at times is completely different than on percieves as it should be ("realistic tying" is one such example) then why not choose the material that exhibts UV properties?

Because there is no point, you don't know whether it works or not. The effectiveness of many materials has been determined by trial and error. If you find a material that works better than any other AND you discover that it absorbs/reflects UV light then you have a possible basis for using that material or a similar one. Without such a correlation there is no point in it. At this time no such correlations are known. It makes no difference what people believe, NOTHING is known.

Well this is what I'm saying Mike. That UV reactive materials DO seem to work better than those materials that are not.

The insects that we imitate have uv properties. How the fish percieve UV light in their total vision is clearly unknown to us, mostly I would guess because we do not see things with the added uv spectrum. It is hard to deny the fact that trout see some UV light, so adding it to your fly is just another bullet to your gun whether it is real or percieved. If fish see red as green and blue as orange it really makes no difference to us does it? As long as we make our imitations to what we see and discover what is missing from the total equation that is the best we can do and all we can do at this time, until we learn more.

How are you going to add it to your fly? You can't perceive it without using various technical tricks and you still don't know whether it works or not. If you find some material that works better than any other and upon investigating it you find that it has some special UV related property, which you assume is the reason for it working much better, then you have a basis for using it. There is no such material and therefore no basis for such assumptions.

Combine my last two statements.

The fact is that some of our most beloved and successful flies have natural UV qualities in them, is this a coincidence or not?

What do you mean by "natural UV qualities?" and how do you determine that? It possibly is a coincidence, I don't know, and neither does anybody else. There is no way to prove or disprove it, it is just pointless. Lots of things have properties which are irrelevant to any particular purpose. If you use magnetic hooks will you catch more fish? I have no idea. Should you use magnetic hooks on the chance that they work better? You can if you like but you still don't know whether it makes any difference or not. If you use magnetic hooks and catch more trout on them than anybody else and in repeatable conditions then you have a basis for deciding to use them. In the absence of such a basis it makes no difference whether you use them or not.

My first statement above. I would say that if there was some scientific basis that trout were attracted to magnefcation then magnetized hooks would be a good idea to see if they help in catching trout.

There is not any concrete evidence but it certainly makes you sit up and wonder. Having said that many of the observations you have made on successful qualities for flies are dead on and I would think that they ALL play a part to a killing fly. Again the more bullets in the gun the better your chances.


What surprises me is the number of people who go on about this stuff, even writing books full of bullshit about it without any concrete evidence at all.That's not "scientific" it's just being silly.

The only evidence that I have is that I have as how the fish respond to the flies when compared to similar flies without UV reactive materials.

[hankaye]

Jim S., Howdy;

Ya made my brain hurt ...

You wouldn't happen to have a list of characters would ya ?
Figured you were the green one,
who's blue and who's black?

Thanks,

hank

[Jim Slattery]

Hi Hank,
Sorry about that
Black is me
Blue is Mike
Green is me
Hope that clears things up

[hankaye]

Jim S., Howdy;

Ya gotta stop beating yerself up so badly that ya show-up all Black & Blue...

Couldn't resist...

hank

[William Anderson]

This is a remarkable thread, in that I have nearly given up on particular color, as I can't get my mind around the idea that I can know why a pattern works, only that it does or doesn't. There's only perfect science and none at all in the same breath. I find myself steeped in the ideas of the giants on which shoulders we stand, and stick with some fundamentals. Presentation, vitality, size, profile...and value. Color is usually listed, lower in the order of importance, but it has to be included. For me, I hedge my bets, focus on the first four and look to value - dark, medium, light, mottled, combinations, etc, rather than a specific color, unless it's just part of a proven (scientifically = catch rate) pattern.

I'm enjoying the depths of this discussion and hope to come out the other side with a better understanding of the use of natural and applied UV qualities found in my tying. Thanks so much for taking such care to discuss this. Sorry to interrupt...carry on.

w

[michaelgmcgraw]

Lots of information to digest,but VERY interesting! Will have to reread it a couple of times. We're not being graded on this are we?