Skunked again
05-28-2008, 01:34 PM
Do shad really care about fly color?
I'm going to buck conventional wisdom and say that they don't.
Last night for example. I caught 2 on a plain white fly, 2 on chartreuse, 1 on orange, 2 on pink/red.
What I did notice is that almost all of the fish I caught came immediately after fly changes. I'd catch 1 or 2, it would be dead, I'd change colors and hook up almost immediately. My theory is that the fish get bored of one color after it's drifted over their head 87 times, and they just tune it out. Kind of like how we adapt to smells. When you switch colors and give them something new they get excited and hit it. I think we mistake this behavior for them "keying in" on certain colors, when we change colors and hook a couple back to back. Maybe one color isn't better than another it just helps to change it up, and be throwing something different than the guys next to you.
Any other opinions on this subject? I'm a soil scientist so I certainly have no grounds to be making generalizations about fish behavior especially a fish as twitchy and spastic as a shad.
All this being said, I do have a favorite color fly, which always seems to catch more fish :wink:
I'm going to buck conventional wisdom and say that they don't.
Last night for example. I caught 2 on a plain white fly, 2 on chartreuse, 1 on orange, 2 on pink/red.
What I did notice is that almost all of the fish I caught came immediately after fly changes. I'd catch 1 or 2, it would be dead, I'd change colors and hook up almost immediately. My theory is that the fish get bored of one color after it's drifted over their head 87 times, and they just tune it out. Kind of like how we adapt to smells. When you switch colors and give them something new they get excited and hit it. I think we mistake this behavior for them "keying in" on certain colors, when we change colors and hook a couple back to back. Maybe one color isn't better than another it just helps to change it up, and be throwing something different than the guys next to you.
Any other opinions on this subject? I'm a soil scientist so I certainly have no grounds to be making generalizations about fish behavior especially a fish as twitchy and spastic as a shad.
All this being said, I do have a favorite color fly, which always seems to catch more fish :wink: