I spooned a rainbow last week on Hanningfield and it was full of what seemed to be green soup - a much of small green things.

Daphnia, I think.


Now, here is the question > Why do people say that the Orange Blob is thought to represent daphnia when the darn things are green?


Maybe we should all be tying our blobs in a nice 'bile green' colour?



Ben

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Assuming you had a close look at the daphnia - and they are usually just above or below 1 mm in size - whu would you imagine that even a small blob, regardless of colour, would imitate anything so small.

It is my belief, without the slightest back-up scientific evidence, that there is something about eating daphnia which makes trout very aggressive,and susceptible to brightly coloured flies.

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Stan Headley

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Ben Daphnia are both Green and Orange I buy them from my local aquarium shop to feed my fish and sometimes they're orange and sometimes green.

My guess is that the blob may look like a bunch of daphnia swarmed together.
Just a thought.
I used to feed them to my tropical fish and they were a pinky orange colour, not sure how the enviorment changes their colour.

Munro

Stan, yes, I did have a close look at them as I often find trout coming out of Hanningfield (only big ressie I had fished) have some in their stomachs.

they were small greeny-hued items around 1mm in size. The fish itself didnt have a pectoral fin to it's name but was very aggresive and fought like a demon.


My question was more of an open discussion as it is often claimed that an orange blob is meant to be an imitation of densely packed daphnia.


regards


Ben

---------- Post added at 06:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:39 PM ----------


Ah! Thanks FOG. I do admit to closely watching my Broth-in-Law when he fed his fish some bloodworm - again, most bloodworm tyings are vasty different in size to a typical bloodworm

Perhaps a size 16 or 18 grub hook sparsely dressed would get there though


Ben

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Later in the season (around June) daphnia rise to the surface layers in the evening at Brenig. The fish just swim in a straight line with their backs out of the water. Throw a cats whisker right in front of them (they won't deviate off their path so you need to get the timing right), and WHAM!

Hmm, this is what I have heard and read several times.


I have heard of Rob Edmunds saying he thinks it is because the blob is so different and stands out like a sore thumb that the trout hit it as it pulled trhough teh daphnia swarms.


Perhaps like a lone zebra standing in a herd of wildebeest would get nailed by a lion


Ben

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Daphnia clouds are/were staple diet at Draycote. But it also means you had to hunt around for fish, and also they would move with the daphnia, so you had to keep in touch with them by changing your drift, also the depth your flies are at as the daphnia move up and down in the water depending on the sun. Big lures, sinking lines, "Northampton style" would catch them - tube flies and owens usually (a local pattern - big chartreuse fritz and marabou job), plus an orange blob on dropper sometimes. Spoon the fish and they would be full of daphia. Mind you, it didn't look like the green bile you're describing! They are water fleas basically, normally you see the things, moving about in the spoon, its pretty obvious what it is

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Could be pellets?

Solid protein is daphnia.

There was one particular 20 acre farm dam in the Eastern Mpumalanga Drakensberg that used to get the most fantastic "blooms" of orange daphnia. I've caught trout that were bursting with the things, all they had to do was to swim around with their mouths open to get fed.

To catch the trout we used the good old orange whisky fly. The Viva also worked well as did a New Zealand pattern called the Red Setter.

The lake also held a few whacking great carp, but that's another story.