Match the Hatch... Fact or Fiction?

Sipper,

If I read you correctly, you have the right idea. That cast is all about the powerful forward stroke and then the very abrupt stoppage of power. The allows the fly line and leader to straighten out and the as was said, it recoils back at you due to the amount of energy that was put into the forward cast and this is what creates the slack that helps you to get a more natural drift.

This combined with the leader that he designed with the longer tippet section is in my opinion one of the major reasons why is works so well. The George Harvey Slack Leader is still my favorite for dry fly fishing. There are somethings that just don't really need much improvement and that is one of them!

Here is the formula for the slack leader from Eric Stroup.
http://www.riseformstudio.tv/leader_formula.html

def a great thread. highly educational. Today on farmington major Flying ant hatch. brought huge trout to the surface for two hours at 10:00. Don't be caught w/o #24-8 flying ants u will be sorry if you don't have em. Very unpredictable hatch as it isn't as dependable and punctual as mayfly hatches but when it hits it hits hard and the trout frenzy for sure. stop in and see Grady and get a few so u aren't scratching ur head if ur lucky enough to be on the stream when this interesting act of nature occurs.It is an awsome hatch but a sure sign that summer is winding down. The days of sunny skies and crystal clear vision and highly visual sight casting are being slowly displaced by glare and wind but with it come many interesting events such as the Flying Ant invasion.

[quote author=afishinado link=topic=3253.msg36802#msg36802 date=1282060395]
Very interesting thread. I learned a lot.

LOL....I have always been skeptical when someone mentions a 100 fish day, but I actually had one, on the Beaverkill no less! I was using the kite technique (by accident). The wind was blowing very strong and there was a heavy caddis hatch (bright green / aka apple caddis). I tied on a bright green LaFountaine ESP and later a EH caddis (which skittered better because of the palmered hackle). I raised my rod to almost vertical and let the wind skitter my fly on the surface. I had fish strike on nearly every cast. Even if I missed them, they would keep striking until I hooked them. I've never had such a day since, but it does prove the method works.
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It seems here that "behavior" was critical in your presentation. Since a skittering fly on a wind blown surface does not allow the fish a good look at the fly, I wonder if this skittering behavior would have trumped size, shape, color, etc, in this case. I think if you had tried an off size or off shape fly, without the skittering, it would have been ignored. But when skittered, you would have caught some of these fish.

Gary Borger calls these properties "super triggers" when they seem to trigger a strike much more often that a fly presented without this property. Gary applies the term "super trigger" to certain fly designs or materials in his book "Designing Trout Flies", but I think this behavior property is also fit the criteria of a "super trigger".

I was re reading some of the earlier posts in this thread and one thing that really stuck out and this is something that Tom and I were talking about a great deal last week. Does catching and releasing the trout constantly in imitations that closely resemble their natural food items make them eat things that the would not otherwise eat? I would think that to a large degree that trout when fooled on a consistent basis do find other types of food organisms to feed on. Take a lot of these Colorado tailwaters into consideration. They get hammered. The fish get caught a lot, but look at the size flies that you have to use there. Size 24 is the norm. Is this fish selectively feeding on midges? I don't think so. I think that is those circumstances man has played a large role in what the trout consider a safe food source.

Aaron.

When I used to fish the San Juan in the late 1990s, I used to catch fish regularly on size 18 and 20 flies. Now the size is much smaller. Has the biomass changed that much? Or is it that the constant pounding by fly fishers using larger flies gradually moved the fish to feed on smaller and smaller food to avoid getting hooked? Will there be a "reverse" migration to larger items as the fishers settle on these very small flies?

I don't think it is migration to what they normally would not eat but rather a gradual shift to the smaller food items that they normally eat but now eat more exclusively.

I have also wondered about this phenomena myself.

[quote author=Silver Creek link=topic=3253.msg36840#msg36840 date=1282150195]




It seems here that "behavior" was critical in your presentation. Since a skittering fly on a wind blown surface does not allow the fish a good look at the fly, I wonder if this skittering behavior would have trumped size, shape, color, etc, in this case. I think if you had tried an off size or off shape fly, without the skittering, it would have been ignored. But when skittered, you would have caught some of these fish.

Gary Borger calls these properties "super triggers" when they seem to trigger a strike much more often that a fly presented without this property. Gary applies the term "super trigger" to certain fly designs or materials in his book "Designing Trout Flies", but I think this behavior property is also fit the criteria of a "super trigger".
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To try to answer your question, on this day, as far as the fly choice, my buddy did not have a bright green colored caddis fly (until I gave him a couple) and caught SOME fish skittering, but not near as many until he tied on the bright green one. This would lead me to believe the trigger or triggers were both the color of the fly as well as the presentation. I would have to say the silhouette of the fly was a distant third. I say this because, when catching so many fish, the flies became torn up beyond recognition. The fish seemed to hit with reckless abandon as long as the bright green body remained intact. Wings, hackle, etc appeared to make no difference.

Thanks for the follow up. i appreciate it very much.

My theory on fly color was arrived at partly because of the experience I just related about the bright green body color along with many other similar experiences throughout my years on the stream.

Another time, while fishing on the Little Lehigh, the water was low and clear in the summer and things were slow after the trico spinner fall and I decided to try a dry / dropper rig with a small nymph. I grabbed a stimmie from my box, it had a bright blue metallic body (I didn’t tie it, I believe some guide out-west gave it to me a while back). I was just using it as an Indy to cast across the stream, so I didn’t care which fly I used, as long as it were visible at a distance. On the first cast a nice trout smacked the stimmie. I landed him and cast again. The same result. I had 5 or 6 fish smack the stimmie without hestitation. Along the bank I noticed some neo blue dragon flies and the light came on.....the fish were keyed in on the color.

I can relate many other times where I found the color of the fly was the trigger for the fish: bright red midge pupa, bright yellow or bright green sallies (stoneflies), along with bright colored caddisflies like the apple caddis, green sedges (Rhyacophila), little black sedges (Chimarra) which are orange free living caddis, and on and on. Fish keyed in on the bright color and flies imitating those colors allowed me to become very successful at fooling the fish.

My theory is that when insects exhibit a bright / unique color, the color itself becomes the primary trigger. While insects with more muted (earth-tone) colors like, grays, olives, browns, creams, tans etc., the color of the insect and thus the fly is secondary to the fish. I seldom worry about getting the exact shade of color for the “earth toned” type insects. I think more in terms of light and dark and not the exact shade of color. When bright-colored insects are hatching or present in the drift, a fly matching that color can make for a very productive day fishing.

[quote author=afishinado link=topic=3253.msg36904#msg36904 date=1282306794]
My theory on fly color was arrived at partly because of the experience I just related about the bright green body color along with many other similar experiences throughout my years on the stream.

Another time, while fishing on the Little Lehigh ... I grabbed a stimmie from my box, it had a bright blue metallic body (I didn’t tie it, I believe some guide out-west gave it to me a while back). .... I had 5 or 6 fish smack the stimmie without hestitation. Along the bank I noticed some neo blue dragon flies and the light came on.....the fish were keyed in on the color.

I can relate many other times where I found the color of the fly was the trigger for the fish: bright red midge pupa, bright yellow or bright green sallies (stoneflies), along with bright colored caddisflies like the apple caddis, green sedges (Rhyacophila), little black sedges (Chimarra) which are orange free living caddis, and on and on. Fish keyed in on the bright color and flies imitating those colors allowed me to become very successful at fooling the fish.

My theory is that when insects exhibit a bright / unique color, the color itself becomes the primary trigger. While insects with more muted (earth-tone) colors like, grays, olives, browns, creams, tans etc., the color of the insect and thus the fly is secondary to the fish. I seldom worry about getting the exact shade of color for the “earth toned” type insects. I think more in terms of light and dark and not the exact shade of color. When bright-colored insects are hatching or present in the drift, a fly matching that color can make for a very productive day fishing.
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Not a bad theory. Here is mine which has aspects of yours.

Much like you I divide the color of naturals and flies into two properties. One is the color itself - like red vs green for example. The other is saturation, or how deep the color is. I think of this as the shade of the color as light green or dark green. It's the same color of green but a different saturation level.

I think when trout do key on color and I think they do, they can key on the color itself, the shade, or both, I think there are situations when you need to get both the color and the shading correct. Your blue damsel example is one.

The blue damsel fly has an immature adult stage that is rarely mentioned even on damselfly pages. Immature stages of some insects including damselflies are called the http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=Teneral+stage& btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= ]Teneral Stage[/url]. You can see a photo http://www.pbase.com/image/80604821]HERE[/url]. I tie adult damsels in both the immature brownish teneral stage and the mature blue stage. Both the stages are identical in shape and size, and in fact are the same insect so they provide an ideal experiment in color. There are times when the brown teneral will out fish the normal blue damsel. For me that proves color can be very important.

But there are other times when the trout key not so much on the actual color but on the shade of the color. I think this is why the color grey works so well and why the Adams is such an effective fly.

Most folks think of grey as a color. I think of grey as a mixture of white and black, with white reflecting the complete light spectrum and black absorbing all the light and reflecting none. So white is not really a single color to me, but all the colors in light. Black is then none of the colors in light. Therefore, I believe white and black are then somewhat unique and opposites in the spectrum of "colors'. They can be mixed to create grey, which I think of as a pure shade of whiteness of light reflection or conversely, as a shade of white light absorption. When or if fish really do concentrate on the shading more than a specific color, I think grey works even though it is not the right "color" at all.

I also believe it works because many of the naturals, unlike the blue damsels, are rather dull in color. Grey is also a dull shade and the appropriate shade of grey I believe can be "close enough" to mimic the actual color.

So that is kind of how I view colors. I believe unlike DBC, that color can be very important. There are times when you do need to get it right. There are other times when it is not so important, and often those times are when the real color tends to be dull, and can be mimicked by grey or another similar shade of dull color. Like you, I think bright colors in naturals do generally require this same colors in the artificial to be most effective.