Do Fish See in Color Fish do indeed perceive color. Every fly fisher knows that or ought to know that. Like humans, the retina of a fish have rods and cones. Cones are used in the day and rods at night. Color vision evolved to help fish identify potential food. In the environment of the fish, the background will either be the bottom, the water itself, or if looking up for food it could be the sky. The bottom is normally tannish olive to green. When looking across the water, the background appears pale silver blue. But if the water is off color due to algae or high water one must take that into consideration as well. Skylight becomes more important at dusk and dawn when it contains more reds. Thus for opportunistically feeding game fish, flies with bright or contrasting colors and/or a lot of flash will make them stand out against the above mentioned backgrounds. The Mickey Finn, tied with yellow and red, and a silver body is one of the most effective attractor patterns. As for dry fly attractors , the Royal Wulff is still hard to beat, with its red and peacock body and white wings. Black flies, because of their strong silhouette also are easy for fish to spot. Let's not forget patterns that contain strands of flashabou or other tinsel that reflect light when stripped or while drifting through the current are easy for fish to spot.

How To Find Fish New Body Of Water If you are going to start fishing a newly created body of water (like a reservoir), here are some things to keep in mind. For the first 2 years, it will be very easy to catch the fish, though they will be smaller (t though about 50% larger in the second year). The 3rd year will prove more of a challenge, as the fish are larger and savvier. It is important to move around the lake and watch where the experienced anglers are getting action. Also keep tabs on where and when each species is feeding. Also, make a note of the moon phase when you record this information, so that you can refer to it during the same phase in following years. You will probably discover that the bass feed best at dawn and dusk, bluegills during midmorning and midafternoon, crappies under lantern light at night, and white bass at high noon.

Confidence in Fly Fishing For those of you who, like me, have memories of fishing that pre-date memories of school, think back to as many fishing partners and trips as you can. Even those people you only went fishing with once. Then try to recall times where the success or failure of a fly fisherman seemed to lie strictly on the fly fisherman's confidence. If you think about it in these terms, I bet you can remember numerous times, when an angler's, confidence or lack thereof, either doomed them or buoyed then until they started catching fish. At times the success of a confident fly fishing angler can be attributed to persistence. An angler, confident in their abilities is just going to fish longer when things don't start hopping right away. But other days when all things are equal, the fisherman with the most confidence often catches the most fish.

New Study Suggests New Harvest Rules
Here is a study that has some interesting implications. According to Science Magazine the size of the fish harvested has an effect on the size of future harvests. Keeping....

Fish firms' call to save sector
SCOTLAND'S leading fish processors' group yesterday called on the government to withdraw from the Common Fisheries Policy to save the sector and hundreds of jobs from devastation..

April 04, 2004
  High water this weekend has most guides that didn't cancel there trips pulling out all the stops to get clients on fish.  All the creeks that we checked on saturday to the west seemed to be filled with Suckers.  Above is a shot of Ellis Cove as the water.