Re: orange flies

Tom Littleton wrote:

Why would you think that what you perceive as a color match is reliable
for what a trout sees?


a good question, Willi, but simply answered:
You cannot be perceiving color in the same way, but some reliability comes
from the fact that your imitation and the natural are both viewed by human
eyes. Since the actual color spectrum remains constant, a similar
relationship, although viewed through a vastly different nervous system
might remain from the trout's view.

Your point that there's reliability because they are both perceived by
human eyes (which is correct) is irrelevant because (aside from maybe
having more confidence and fishing the fly better) it makes no
difference whether the human thinks the color matches or not. It's the
fish's eye that judges.

Trout perceive a wider spectrum than we do and are able to see colors
than are not visible to us. So even though the color spectrum is
constant, their visible spectrum is different from ours. They are also
able to utilize polarized light which is something else that is alien to
our species. I'm also confident that there are other undiscovered
differences in how they perceive things visually.



That said, I am largely with you that color is less important than size and
especially presentation(behavior) of the fly.
Still, on a lot of our eastern limestone and tailwater streams, getting the
color close is an absolute necessity.


The debate for me would be what "getting the color close" would mean. I
think the best match to a trout's eye could often be a color that
appears VERY different to our eyes. Difficult thing to study because
it's hard (to say the least) to match colors we can't see or take into
account visual processes that our vision can't utilize.



Willi





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