Speaking of steelhead: I’m always amused to recall that when I first heard about these mythic fish, back in the sixties, now regarded as the heyday of California steelheading, I was led to believe that steelhead, headed to their spawning grounds, struck the fly “out of anger.” As though bulls provoked by red capes. Of course, I lived in southern California, a long way from the popular steelhead rivers—and we’re all aware how much distortion information suffers the farther it travels from the source.
I should also mention that when I moved to Oregon and first began actually catching winter steelhead, as opposed to just fishing for them, I often used a fly I created out of a half-dozen different colors of marabou, a fly I called the Rain-Bou, inspired by the opinion of another steelheader who believed that if you gave the fish a wide assortment of colors, they could choose the one they like, a preference that might vary as water color, clarity, and even weather conditions changed. The Rain-Bou also served the needs of an angler who, like myself, has difficulty choosing between one fly color and another.
Many anglers and fly tyers, of course, abandon all pretense of “matching the hatch” or any attempt to imitate an available food source, choosing instead to adhere to a line of reasoning that begins with the idea that fish, especially big fish, are predators that want to eat, and all we need out of the fly is some aspect of life—movement, shape, perhaps even attitude—that triggers a strike. Yet here, again, anglers and tyers both are influenced by the degree to which they still think the color of the fly might suggest something real in the natural world or, conversely, colors proven to “work” for reasons we can at best only guess.
In other words, opinions about the importance of fly color, like so many other choices we make, fall all across the board.
So?
Sorry to say, if you’re looking for answers, you’ve come to the wrong place. In case you missed the note, I’m the guy with a new fly-tying book that begins with an unusual thesis: Your fly doesn’t matter.
Sheesh.
That said, deep down I’m certain color matters: But maybe not to the fish.
Gray’s angling editor Scott Sadil believes most of the time the hardest thing in fly fishing is getting the fly in front of a fish without scaring it away. It’s what happens when that doesn’t work that keeps him awake at night.
