The fly tying experiments continue...

Heading south--hopefully--to fish Belize.  I'm stocking up my fly boxes with old standbys and more importantly, with slight variations of those time tested favorites.  I am convinced that as fishing pressure increases in an area or a watershed, fish will learn to avoid those patterns or lures that they have seen too often.  As anglers, too many of us have convinced ourselves that fish have pea sized brains--which may be true.   However ,they are capable of rudimentary learning--or "conditioning" if

 you'd rather call it that.  Like Pavlov's dog, they learn to avoid the sting of the hook in those situations where there is a lot of angling pressure.  They can, under extreme circumstances, become habituated to human presence even...  One only need visit the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco to see the hand fed Koi if you remain skeptical.

Rather than try to re-invent the wheel, though, more often than not all we have to do is come up with slight variations of these old favorites.  A minor change in color or use a different material.

 In a perfect world, we would also know what "the trigger" is.  What is it about a fly--or a lure or even the insect (or shrimp or anchovy or whatever) that convinces (or triggers) that pea sized fish brain to hit it?  Is it flash--or movement?  A lifelike shape?  Color?  All of these can come into play although it's rare that we'd need to incorporate all these elements into a single fly--because, after all, fish do have small brains...

 Here are various experiments with epoxies, mylar braid, Edgebright and Ice Dub.  We'll have to see how well they work...