The Best Laid Plans...

[Steve Walker]

I thought I would have a go at tying some fry imitations for perch. I thought something along the lines of a Cats Whisker, with a light coloured marabou tail, a darker marabou wing and a bit of tinsel. I also wanted a beard of the lighter coloured marabou - to try to get the dark back / pale belly colours of small coarse fish. I wanted a dubbed body in green or blue, with a touch of red near the front to mark either the pectoral fins of a roach or the red throat of a stickleback.

So this is how they came out:





I wanted to see how they would look, so I wet them:



I was quite pleased with that, the two-tone effect and the glitter seemed to be working.

Finally, I dropped them into one of my aquaria, to see how they look underwater.

Oh dear.

Not how I planned at all.





Obviously they look a bit better with some movement slicking the feathers back into a more fish-like shape, but as soon as the forward motion ceases they start to look like a drowned budgie again.

Still, an interesting lesson in the difference between how we might imagine something will look underwater and how it actually looks, and I will give them a try at some point anyway, they might catch me some fish.

[seanie]

They really look the job when wet, Great effect. They should work a treat

[marmalade]

The one in the middle looks a bit surprised. Pure imitation! It has to work..

[g bigtrout]

Good example to show the fly does not go slim when in the water....i do be amazed how many did though.

[Steve Walker]

You would look surprised too, if a giant cardinal tetra had just tried to bite your tail end!

Maybe if I suspend them in the flow from the filter I might get a better idea of how they will swim. Feeling a little under-confident in them at the moment.

[g bigtrout]

Originally Posted by Steve Walker

You would look surprised too, if a giant cardinal tetra had just tried to bite your tail end!

Maybe if I suspend them in the flow from the filter I might get a better idea of how they will swim. Feeling a little under-confident in them at the moment.

In a fast flowing stream or river they would look really alive.

[steveparton]

Durndest Perch I ever saw !

When I was little , Dick Walker used to run a neat wee column in Trout and Salmon .
If you had invented a fly and you'd caught only 50 trout on it you could send it in and he'd include it and you would become famous !

It only took me 3 years before I did one that passed ! He called it a 'Rassler'.

I wonder why he put that restriction on ? ( And no , I don't think it was the two books he subsequently made up out of the patterns .)

Steve Parton

[Steve Walker]

Originally Posted by steveparton

Durndest Perch I ever saw !

Not for looking like perch - for catching perch!

---------- Post added at 09:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:54 PM ----------

Originally Posted by g bigtrout

In a fast flowing stream or river they would look really alive.

There's a thought. I used to catch a lot of chub, perch and little pike on spinners on the upper Thames, I might give them a try on there in the summer.

[Steve Walker]

Originally Posted by steveparton

I wonder why he put that restriction on ?

Having given it some thought, I would say that it was so that he wouldn't have people sending in speculative and unproven patterns in the hope of having smoke blown up their rear. Do I guess right?

Now, I never met the great man, though he was one of my childhood heroes, but I've read enough of his work to know that he was an empiricist who believed that if you wanted to know how something looked underwater, you put the bloody thing underwater and looked at it. So, I think he would have approved of my experiment, if not of my unproven flies, and it was my experiment rather than my flies that I wanted to talk about.