DHS Body colour

[Dougie Smith]

The deer hair sedge and DHE are flies that I use a lot, usually in black, hares ear or claret body colours. Does anyone use any other colours with success? Does a bright red seals fur, or green seals fur body work?
Sometimes I find that wild trout prefer something very bright instead of what I think they should really want - it annoys me when my fishing mate catches lots more trout than I do simply because they seem to have poor taste.

[The General]

Olive and Natural hares ear catches loads, I find its more how you fish them rather
than colour.   
Having sed that  - - - - -
I am going all out to replace them with Traditionalists Hares Ears Upsided Down
Thingies.
See what happens


Davie

[haresear]

I do OK with olive, grey and yellow. That's confused you eh?
Me too. :? Tie the lot and try the lot.

alex

[Dougie Smith]

Natural colours do catch loads, but why am I outfished by a boat partner some days in the following scenario - mid-May, bright conditions, a prolific loch full of small-ish fish and some decent ones (Loch Lee), heaps of buzzer shucks in the water. I put on a black DHS and, say, a pennel on the point, which I fish slowly. My mate puts on some really unsightly, bright #10 flies on (heavily dressed soldier palmer and some hot orange thing, for example) and proceeds to out-catch me 5 fish to 1 when stripping in these flies. I only really start catching when I stick on a dunkeld and pull it, despite the fact that the trout are gorging on buzzers. My questions are:
why do his "horrible" flies do so well? (maybe a question for sexyloops) and would a bright body coloured DHS do better than a dull, natural or muted one?

[haresear]

Dougie,

Seen and starred in the movie.

I had one day on Loch Borralan on which I stuck with my low diameter tippet to wee imitative flies only to be completely outfished by a man (Bill from Perth) using hefty nylon and pulling big flees. The ratio was embarrassing and must have been 5-1 in his favour.

So why am I giving advice....?

On the other hand, a good fly tyer (Harelug) readily admits that I (a bad tyer) catch at least as many fish as he does.

It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. That's what gets results....
If the man next to you is getting fish and you are not, just copy his retrieve. If this doesn't work, copy everything he's doing. If this doesn't work, just sit and watch and learn.

Actually, I think we could (I certainly could) learn a fair bit from just watching each other fish, from time to time.


Alex

[The General]

Cannot say it enuff.   Its the way you fish, not necessarily the fly.   
I know from experience (mostly bad) that the guy beside you can be
almost identical in set up and flies yet pulls more fish than you and it can
be little things like a slow sinking tippet, heavier hook, stopping to light a fag
before retrieving, fly floating/sinking as soon as it hits the water.
Bright days bright flies is all I've heard my whole life, as is dull days dull
flies.    One thing I have learned is that you think you have discovered
the secrets only for the trout not to have!  Also can say that it has
been the opposite in a lot of cases and have been catching fish when
your partner has blanked, some perverted enjoyment taken in those circumstances
as well, especially if the sod did the same to you the week before.   Maybe there
is the competitive angler in all of us   :shock:

Sed this before in other posts that on bright days to continue catching in any amount you have to go way down to the fishes and that holds no enjoyment for
me.

Hope any of this makes sense
(if it was reely reely easy would we be doing it?)
Davie

[Wildfisher]

Sed this before in other posts that on bright days to continue catching in any amount you have to go way down to the fishes and that holds no enjoyment for me.

This is exactly how I feel about fishing for rainbows. It is 100% depth critical and this outweighs every  other factor.  I just cannot be bothered faffing about finding the depth. I would rather continue to fish on  or near the surface even if I only catch the odd fish because I know I will enjoy catching a few this way far more than a large number dragging the bottom. I find catching them a meaningless experience  in angling terms anyway – yes it's fun for the first one or two but  I get bored after that  anyway so it makes no difference. Really weird thing fishing. I can happily wander up and down the banks of the Don day after day and only get the odd fish yet catching stockies bores the tits off me after an hour or so!

[Dougie Smith]

Some interesting replies there. What do you think of what Stan Headley says on Page 177 of "The Loch Gospel According to Stan" about colour? That page shows a table of colours and states when those colours should work (eg claret is not good in bright light, can be good in good light but is indespensable in poor light. Orange is first choice in bright light, occasionally good in good light and not good in poor light). If the key to fishing is firstly the way that the fly is fished and then the fly itself, is the colour of the fly important at all? According to Stan it is. I find his table interesting, and hope to try to test it out this year. His comments about orange being first choice in bright light seem to back up what I found on Loch Lee last May, where changing to a Dunkeld made all the difference.

[Wildfisher]

Dougie "bright day bright colour"  is an old adage that I first heard back in the 1960s when I was a laddie. Seems to work and your experience on Loch Lee backs that up. So I would say Stan is right but it's not groundbreaking. Bob Wyatt said he sometimes  uses a silver bodied dry DHS on bright days and that it does the trick, then there is the old silver sedge etc.  Stan is big on orange flies. Perhaps  he supports Rangers.  :lol:

[Tim]

Not tried tinsel on a DHE, but can recomend tinsel rib on black and dark claret seal fur size 10 or 12. Was the killer fly in Caithness last September.

Worked static but better pulled.

Tim