Saturday 25 September 2010

Red/White flies?

Out of all the flies I tie for customers red/white models are the most popular colour combination. Why? What is it about these two colours that seem to catch fish or fishermen feel confident fishing with?. There are very few fish in either salt or fresh that posses these colour traits yet If there is one colour scheme out of all of them I would use (bar chartreuse/white) it would have to be red/white. I have caught a hell of a lot of fish with predominantly red/white flies. Now you could argue that the reason for this is because I've fished extensively more with this colour combination attached to my leaders, so obviously you are going to catch more with a red/white fly simon!, but the last couple of years I've faught the deamons inside my head on numerous occassions telling me to shove the red/white fly on and have persevered and been successfull none the less with other coloured flies....Yet when the voices eventually get the better of me and I eventually do slap a red/white fly on, I invariably catch a fish with it.Well of course you will dickhead! the law of averages state that.

Looking at the black books statistics though, for the last three yrs here on the island, Red/white hasn't faired as well as other colour combo's like Chartreuse/White or pink/white or even Orange. I'm lucky to have a large population of pike here for me to change my fly with every fish I catch but I have noticed that the red/white combo has stayed on my line longer than usual. Sure it could be the shape of the fly, the materials its made from, Its length, the speed at which you retrieve it back, weather conditions or even moon phases that are affecting its ability to catch a pike quicker, but I have noticed that maybe its not as effective colour combination here on the Baltic as when I was fishing on the lakes in central Finland when I 1st moved here.

2 comments:

Ulf Hagström said...

Interesting thoughts Si! As we use to say; the more confident you are in a fly the more you will fish it and that alone will make you feel that it catches you more fish than any other pattern. I must however say that on this side of the baltic, where I fish, red/white is one of the most efficient. So far this year I have caught 16 pike and 13 were on red/white combo. Up to last year I hadn't fished a red/white pike fly for almost five years but since starting again it has become one of those "if nothing else works" flies.

If the success this year comes from the colour combo itself or for the fact that it has been one of the few flies that I have fished with that has a raccoon zonker style, it could just as well be the unique movement of the fly as the colours but I think it is probably a combination of the two.

All about the grab said...

Interesting to read that red/white has been working for you Ulf....Has been a bit disappointing the last couple of years here.

I'm starting to use chartreuse/white more these days although Pink/white has been the ticket lately. So many colours and not enough days in the year my friend to go fihing with them all.