They represent nothing really.

[Malcolm]

Looking though my fly box and getting ready for the new season I noticed just how many of my favourite patterns represent nothing at all. Now that's all right if you are fishing with lures/wets on lochs but I am talking about flies for representative fishing and catching fish when they are actually feeding on upwings. Let me show you a few examples:

A really dealy dry fly on the lochs and a great favourite of mine is the Netopir dry a great fly when the Olivesa are skidding over a loch or even when the March browns are coming down and the standard patterns aren't working this has caught me quite a few:

http://www.namuche.pl/images/galeria/gm_as1_04.jpg

Then there is the Griffiths Gnat. Another favourite which has caught me fish in all sorts of olive hatches - even iron blues

http://www.riverbum.com/images/products/big/Griffiths-Gnat-side.jpg

Of course the Griffiths Gnat is the little brother of a famous mayfly pattern - the Shadow mayfly

http://www.selectafly.com/2012/components/com_redshop/helpers/thumb.php?filename=product/Shadow_Mayfly____4e006cf550712.jpg&newxsize=200&newysize=0&swap=0

and of course the deadly River Clyde pattern - the jingler which is a hairy monster of a fly which is at times absolutely deadly and nothing like the delicate flies which it often represents

OliveJingler.MOV


I could have chosen another dozen flies in a similar mode. These just happened to be ones I use frequently
So it seems to me the fish see things a damn sight differenetly to what we do and their triggers are still something of  a mystery

[Rabmax]

I have never used the Jingler before Malcolm.But i have a load tied up for the coming trout season.I just know they will be a a big hit on some of my local rivers where they like there flies buggy.Cheers

[Traditionalist]

Have now read that a few times and decided to reply.  I am bound  to disagree with the thread title itself and some of the conclusions.

Firstly, that is a pretty good selection of generic patterns and they all have in common that they can actually represent all sorts of things.  They will probably work in very many circumstances. In each of these circumstances they represent what the fish accepts as food.

Many anglers might disagree on what they represent, but they are all fairly representative generic patterns.  There may be some cases where a specific pattern might work better, but not all that many on most waters.

You could put together various selections similar to this, ( as you wrote), quite easily and they would also work. But they would also have to be good generic representations.

That is not at all the same thing as choosing a dozen fancy flies at random.  In that case you will find that they don't work very well because they are not good representations of anything at all and in many cases the fish will not take them.

Generic selections of this nature work fine and it is a sensible strategy for many. However, there are also occasions where good specific patterns will take fish when they ignore generics.  Also, the efficacy of such generics, ( or any other flies for that matter), depends very heavily on the skill and knowledge of the person using them.

[bushy palmer]

I totally agree with Malcolm. I have always found the notion of fish going through a thought process completely laughable. The very idea that fish can identify a species and decide if the artificial is behaving correctly before deciding whether or not to take it does not make sense to me.
Last season on the river I had to kill a large trout when I realized on attempting to return it that there was just too much blood. When I took the fish home and gutted it I was amazed to find that its stomach and gut were absolutely packed with material. I reckon less than 5% was "food" whilst the rest was stones, silt, seeds and other detritus with absolutely no nutritional value. I even found some polystyrene.
I do not believe that all this material has ended up in there as byproduct but rather has been taken individually because for the split second required as it flashed in the trout's periphery each appeared to be a thing of life.

[Wildfisher]

I remember Lesley Crawford saying that after some "hatch matching"  on a Caithness loch she caught a nice trout of about 1 1/2 lb. She took it home  for eating and found it was absolutely stuffed with blades of grass.

[Traditionalist]

Fish can't think, they are creatures of instinct. Instinct also controls their reactions to their environment.  However, many fish have very very good instincts, especially larger ones, as that's how they managed to survive long enough to get large. Fish that instinctively react correctly to various stimuli, ( including anglers), survive, the others don't. Although even that has changed now with widespread catch and release. Even so, fish that survive only do so because they have not made any fatal mistakes.

Fish with good survival instincts,  ( I.e larger fish per se), are harder to catch than the others, and they are also instinctively more careful in what they take. There are occasions when fish will take all sorts of outlandish things, but it is not a good idea to rely on that as an angler.

Experience proves beyond a doubt that good insect imitations properly presented catch fish better than poor ones. If the fish does not instinctively reject something it will probably take it into it's mouth at least, although it may still reject a lot of stuff very quickly after taking it.  This is one reason some types of fishing are extremely difficult, the fish has taken and rejected a fly without the angler even knowing it has done so. 

None of this has anything to do with fish being able to think or recognise anything at all.

[bushy palmer]

Experience proves beyond a doubt that good insect imitations properly presented catch fish better than poor ones. .

Experience of whom Mike?- certainly not me. I don't believe I've ever seen a fishing fly that more than vaguely looks like a real insect.

Too many times (like many anglers I imagine) I've been caught up casting to one feeding fish trying to mimic exactly what it is feeding on and how that food source is being presented only to give up after ten or so fruitless minutes and end up catching the same fish whilst dragging my fly over the water in completely the opposite direction whilst moving on to the next.

If flies had to be specific then I am at a loss as to why so many fish are apparently oblivious to the presence of the hook.

[Fishtales]

In my experience suggestive patterns catch more fish than imitative ones, or as close as we can get with fur and feather, or I wouldn't be catching any fish. Fish are opportunistic feeders and will take anything they think is food into their mouths, if it tastes or feels wrong then they will eject it just as quickly, they don't have hands as we have to take it and have a look at it first. If the imitation is in their mouths, no matter what it is, then the angler has a chance of catching that fish.

[Wildfisher]

A few seasons ago on the Don at Kemnay I was fishing a hatch of olives in very bright conditions. Prime time – start of May. There were fish rising , sporadically in what looked like perfect water. I threw  most of the contents of my box at them, but they quite simply refused everything.

In frustration I was on the point of throwing the box itself at them, but tied on a size 12 Humpy or some other bushy American dry fly, I cannot remember exactly. I got a fish straight away. This fly was 3 or 4 x bigger than any natural I saw floating by.

Later when I had time to think about it I reckoned  they were being put off by the leader, but the bigger fly perhaps drew their attention  away from it. These were not even big fish.

Once again this reinforces my own belief that the single most important thing is not to scare the fish.

[Traditionalist]

Experience of whom Mike?- certainly not me. I don't believe I've ever seen a fishing fly that more than vaguely looks like a real insect.

Too many times (like many anglers I imagine) I've been caught up casting to one feeding fish trying to mimic exactly what it is feeding on and how that food source is being presented only to give up after ten or so fruitless minutes and end up catching the same fish whilst dragging my fly over the water in completely the opposite direction whilst moving on to the next.

If flies had to be specific then I am at a loss as to why so many fish are apparently oblivious to the presence of the hook.

Of generations of anglers.

It doesn't have to look like a fly to you, it has to look like food to the fish. The fish uses instinctive criteria to feed, it doesn't think about it.

The fact that you are unable to catch a certain fish in some particular way with some particular imitation you think is good is irrelevant.

Flies do not have to be specific in the majority of cases, but good specifics work better simply because they do not cause the fish to reject or ignore them instinctively.  There is no way to know what a fish perceives, the whole of fly-fishing is based on human perceptions. We make flies that we think are good imitations. Experience proves that fly-fishing works, and using what are accepted as good imitations has proven to work consistently, but that does not rule out anything else, or prove that these are the best imitations.

If you catch a fish on a fly then that fly was a good imitation for that fish at that moment under those circumstances.  You can not know why the fish took it.  You can assume that it took it because it was a good imitation of some specific insect that it was feeding on at the time, and that might or might not be true.  A hundred other flies might have worked just as well, many that looked nothing like the insects you were trying to imitate.

Fish will often ignore many naturals and then take one particular one from dozens that are floating past. Why that one?   There is no way to know, the fish doesn't know either, it feeds instinctively. Taking food for fish is a matter of instinct.  It eats to survive.  Why it eats some things and ignores others can not be known, it is entirely a matter of the instincts involved.

Many fish will not ignore a hook, they will refuse a fly with a prominent hook. Not because they know what a hook is, but because the fly does not look or behave as they instinctively perceive it should.

Many other fish will more or less ignore hooks on flies, they see something to eat and they eat it, they don't think about it, or what that extra appendage might be. They can not do so.

Many fish will "hover" near a dry fly and appear to "inspect" it, before apparently "deciding" what to do.  Some will take a fly after "inspecting" it, and others will refuse.  What instinct(s) govern this exactly nobody knows. But poor imitations are refused more often than good ones, that's how we found out some of the good ones, they are the ones that aren't refused.

In fly-fishing you are playing the probabilities as much as anything, if you manage to get a reasonable imitation presented to a feeding fish without it being aware of your presence and without the artificial doing anything unusual then there is a good chance you will hook it.  That is not certain of course, it is merely likely.  The better your imitation and the better your presentation then the greater the likelihood the fish will take, but it's still only a probability.

If you try long enough you will eventually catch a fish on virtually anything you try, even fag-ends, blades of grass and a host of other stuff, including bare hooks, but the probabilities are much lower than when using reasonable imitations. 

All you are doing with good flies, well presented, is lowering the odds in your favour.  You can't outthink a fish, it doesn't think at all.  You have to suit your offerings and presentations to the way it reacts.  Trying to figure out "why" a fish does something is pointless.  You have to know what it does in a certain situation with certain prey and recreate the situation as accurately as you can. If you do that you will catch fish.

Knowing what the prey does and knowing how the fish reacts to specific prey is the name of the game. Looking for reasons for all these things is doomed to failure.  It is as it is, you are merely trying to utilise an existing set of circumstances.  You can not predict them and you can not know why it happens, all you know is that it does.