Blue McFly foam for Steelhead?

Sylvaneous

Active member
Joined
Sep 11, 2006
Messages
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I almost posted this to tying, but whatever.
Anyone have experience or heard any solid info on using that pale blue stuff for steelhead and rainbows? I saw it and got a pack. Maybe I shoud have consulted the board first.
Syl
 
Doesn’t hurt to try blue. It is the secret formula that everyone knows about and whispers to fellow anglers over a pint or a glass of bourbon in Pulaski.

I’ve got an awful lot of robin egg blue estaz and glo bug material, and flies, but I rarely use it. I have better luck with white, cream, orange and especially various shades of yellow.

My belief is it really doesn’t matter as long as the fly looks translucent when wet.

As a practical matter, trout eyes have only rods, no cones so strictly speaking, they see on a grayscale, not a spectrum. Kind of like a black and white tv for anyone else of my advanced years. Your brain sees a black and white picture and immediately assigns color to the various shades of gray.

The trout’s brain, though smaller than its eye, notices the subtle changes. It has no point of reference to assign color. Think of it like putting a pale blue egg next to a pale yellow egg, snapping a picture with your phone and converting the image to black and white. There will be subtle differences.

But I almost always start my day steelhead fishing with a pale to bright yellow egg pattern. My stated reason is because the wet version most closely resembles the color and general look of the fresh trout and salmon eggs I have seen.

But if I’m not getting hits, I do what we all do: ask the guys who are getting hits what they are using and switch to that. Sometimes it’s blue. Sometimes it’s a giant stonefly.

But when people ask me, I always recommend yellow, all else being equal. And I’ve caught plenty of steelhead over the years, mostly on yellow.

My brain knows that the reason is probably because that’s mostly what I fish with, but my fishing instincts say, “stick with what works.”

I suspect that if I used blue the way I use yellow, my catch would be about the same.

And the guys who swear by blue (the way I swear by yellow) always fish with blue, which means they catch most of their steelheads with blue.

But they do love it, and there’s a steelhead bait available in Pulaski called blu-goo that is popular enough to stay on the shelves, even in the inconspicuous bait refrigerator at the (mostly) flies only shop Whitaker’s.

There a plenty of digressions to be explored over bourbon or beer about things like the effects of blue skylight and yellow sunlight and how it reflects off a fly on a cloudy day, or at first light or whatever.

Decades ago my dad came to the conclusion that you catch fish with the flies you have faith in. But he left me well in excess of 1,000 salmon and steelhead flies and all colors and materials are well represented, including blue.

So yeah, tie up some blue eggs. You might clean up when everyone else is thrashing the water to a froth and not getting a bump.

Or not.
 
There was a study some years ago of rainbows (fish in captivity, not streams) that showed a decided preference for blue colored food or lures. Can't remember the details or source, but it raised some eyebrows.

Advanced Search might find some discussion here on PAFF (please don't re-fresh old threads).
 
I had a blue period for steelhead and fished blue estaz eggs in the Lake O tribs and did well. IMHO, blue works better in bright periods in the middle of the day, but that is subject to a lot of barstool discussion.

Blue is a popular color for trout, especially rainbows, as well. PA author Charlie Meck was a big fan of blue glo bugs and blue zebra midges were a hot thing for a minute. Blue buggers have had their day as well. My favorite flashy wet fly is the teal, blue, and silver. Who knows how fish see blue, but they do take blue flies.

Color is something we all argue about. John Shewey's classic steelhead fly book ends its discussion of color with the observation that 80% of the anglers use the "hot" color and catch 80% of the fish while the 20% using other colors only catch 20% of the fish. Sort of puts the "hot" color in perspective.
 
There was a study some years ago of rainbows (fish in captivity, not streams) that showed a decided preference for blue colored food or lures. Can't remember the details or source, but it raised some eyebrows.

Advanced Search might find some discussion here on PAFF (please don't re-fresh old threads).


My wife will not be surprised to hear that I am wrong.

This one shows a preference for blue in rainbow trout at 2 degrees above freezing F (+1 C), which corresponds to water temperature in the late fall and winter, and for red when the temperature is in the high range of the trout comfort zone: https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.n...5Y4DRZuUpw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA


This one seems to be in keeping with the preferences for red as the research seems to have been conducted in warmer weather: https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/download/pdf/831/1.0099872/1

And this one documents the preference for blue: https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/download/pdf/831/1.0101880/2

And this one shows my dismissive tone about the size of a trout brain was out of line: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1095-8649.1973.tb04497.x

The reading material is quite dense, so there will be no quiz. The real test will be whether I can improve my catch rate with the newfound knowledge.

Doubtless my wife will be as unimpressed with all of this in the same way that I am uninterested in rearranging furniture.

Thanks, Dave, for inspiring me to check my work.
 
I typically used it as the dot in a single egg fly with the majority of the fly being egg or pale yellow.
 
Yep it works. Get some to try. I’ve used it as the main egg color with orange or red dot. But I’m sure it works at tioga says too.
 
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