Trout Fishing and the Color of Wet Dubbing

[flytire]

its not the color of the dry dubbing the fish sees

read the article

Trout Fishing and the Color of Wet Dubbing

note: the photos from the article show the dubbing applied to black thread but would have a different effect when using lighter threads as the under body

 

[mcnerney]

Norm: That was an excellent read, thanks for sharing!

 

[dc410]

Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing that with us. Sometimes, the devil is absolutely in the details. Good stuff.

 

[silver creek]

I discovered this along time ago and would mix my own dubbing, wet it with spit and add dyed rabbit fur or synthetics until I get the wet shade I wanted. Many dry fly dubbing are synthetics but I still think they get darker when wet and they also change a bit with floatants.

I've read that sythetics don't get darker but my personal experience is that some definitely do. I use a nylon yarn for my serendipities and it gets darker when wet. Dazzleaire sparkle yarn gets darket when wet. So don't beleiove that synthetics don't get darker when wet. It is such a simple test so wet the synthetic and let your own eyes judge.

 

[ts47]

Thanks for posting this. It was a good read and gave me something to think about with my fly tying.

 

[overmywaders]

Of note also is that iridescent materials, such as peacock herl, are not iridescent once thoroughly wet. The iridescence is caused by air gaps between the layers of chitin. Fill those air gaps with water - which has a different refractive index than air - and the iridescence is lost.

 

[silver creek]

I've been thinking about the darkening of wet flies and dubbing and it seems to me that lots of things look darker when wet. Wet sand at a beach look darker, wet clothes look darker, wet rocks look darker, wet wood looks darker.

The common denominator is water and the only difference between looking at a wet object and a dry object is that there is a layer of water between our eyes and the surface of the object.

We all know that light reflects off of the surface of water so there is less light getting to the object. That means there is less light available under water to be reflected back to our eyes.

We also know the mirror effect of the under surface of the water, so some of the light that would have been reflected back to our eyes from the object never gets to us since it is reflect back under water by the mirror. This light reflected light is scattered back underwater and may make it out or it could be absorbed by another color in the dubbing if the dubbing is multicolored. If it does get out, our eyes mislocate the origin of the color and it is assigned to another location. So there is brightness lost and mislocation by the back and forth reflection.

What this implies is that it does not matter if the dubbing is natural or synthetic, all will darken because the darkening is not due only to the material but to the fact that there is a water/air interface between our eyes and the material.

If the darkening of the material is dependent ONLY on an air/water interface, what does this imply for the trout who do NOT have an air/water interface between it's eyes and the dubbing on the fly? At this time I think they see a darker dubbing (because it is wet and under water so less light reaches it) but it is slightly BRIGHTER than we see because the reflective mirror effect of the under surface of the water does not interfere with the amount of reflected color that reaches their eyes.

After doing this mind game to try to figure out what was happening, I did a google search and came up with two sources. I think my deductions are similar.

Q: Why do wet stones look darker, more colorful, and polished? | Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist

Cloth's Darker When Wet (Dr Karl Homework: ABC Science)

 

[overmywaders]

Artificial vs natural body materials should also be considered for dry flies. For example, a Pink Lady with a silk floss body will absorb more water, become translucent, and change in body color to a red from pink. Nylon floss will remain the same color and translucency (minimal). Since the design of the Pink Lady predates Nylon floss, the natural silk is probably the way to go.

Oil-based floatants will change the color of silk and natural dubbing bodies. Rodmakers are faced with a similar problem -- the old cane rodmakers used silk thread for windings. However, some of them treated the silk with dilute PVA or shellac in order to prevent the oil in the varnish from turning the winds translucent. Other rodmakers liked the translucence. As we know, oils on many natural materials, e.g., paper, turn them almost transparent. In the US prairie states, the old sod houses used oiled paper as windows, glass being too expensive. [Semi-precious stones, especially emeralds, are often oiled to improve the appearance, as well. Watch for this.]

IME, the posts of parachute flies are best when natural white hair, or Antron white are used. I tied some with yellow polyester posts and could never get a rise. I ascribe this to UV reflectance, the yellow poly is very dark in the UV. I had the same problem when I tied Hairwing Royal Coachmen with yellow kip wings.

 

[losthwy]

Many dry fly dubbing are synthetics but I still think they get darker when wet and they also change a bit with float ants...
I've read that synthetics don't get darker but my personal experience is that some definitely do....

I tested some of my synthetics and they did become darker. UV Ice Dubbing was an exception.

The article got me thinking about something I had never given any thought to. Good one.

 

[airborne 82nd]

Great read , thank you I know myself I tend to let personal likes of specific colors influence my selection of colors , lol guilty. I do know purple is a lasting color under water at specific depths where other colors tend to kind of all lose their color ( not explains well ). Butgreat read. I seen a video where a guy tied a handful of " killer bugs " with the same tan yarn however changed thread color on hook shank , then placed in glass of water and based on the thread color each fly had a different look ..
Airborne

 

[myt1]

Another thing that needs to be considered, forgive me if someone already mentioned this, is how much light actually penetrates below the surface of the water, and what the wavelength of that light is.

I’ve read some articles and my very simplistic take away was between flies looking darker when wet, and only certain wavelengths of light being able to penetrate more than a few feet below the surface, pretty much all flies look black to a fish.

 

[silver creek]

Another thing that needs to be considered, forgive me if someone already mentioned this, is how much light actually penetrates below the surface of the water, and what the wavelength of that light is.

I’ve read some articles and my very simplistic take away was between flies looking darker when wet, and only certain wavelengths of light being able to penetrate more than a few feet below the surface, pretty much all flies look black to a fish.

What you read was wrong. First of all, what you see looking INTO the water has traveled both ways into and out of the water. What the fish sees has traveled only INTO the water so half the depth.

If you can see the bottom of the stream, it is obvious that "light" has traveled TWICE the depth of the water to get back to your eyes. So for fly fishers, the fish can see the color of our flies unless the water is extremely dirty. We need not worry that "all flies look black."

Here is the science.

Light penetrates quite a distance into clear water and the distance it penetrates depends on the color.

In pure water, blue penetrates the deepest and that is one reason that water looks blue. The other is excitation of the water molecule by light and emission of light in the blue spectrum. After blue, indigo and violet fall off.

As you can see in the graph below that even red penetrates to 33 feet and blue to over 300 feet into pure water. So at the depths that fly fishers fish, all colors are visible to the fish.

And here is really the important takeaway. Suppose that at the depths we fish part of the colors were lost.

If you imitate the color of the natural, the water absorption of color self corrects.

Suppose the natural is a red midge larva like the one below and you imitate it with the fly from fly tier's page. By matching the color, the color of BOTH the natural and the fly will be the same "perceived" color regardless of the depth in the water.

That is WHY we imitate color. It self corrects regardless of water depth or in fact regardless of the amount of light due to the time of day or night.

 

[myt1]

Wow, I had it all wrong.
Thanks.

 

[trev]

If you imitate the color of the natural, the water absorption of color self corrects.

Are saying that dry material should match whatever we are trying to imitate? If so is that a change of position from when the thread was started?

 

[ottosmagic13]

I have never found the imperceptible change in color to matter when in comes to nymphs being wet. I've noticed that some flies look significantly darker after applying GINK or LOON Aquel but the pattern still works.

Dries can be a different story.


Then again I've seen trout mouth leaves, sticks, and all sorts of flotsam so ?

 

[silver creek]

Are saying that dry material should match whatever we are trying to imitate? If so is that a change of position from when the thread was started?

My first post is below:

I discovered this along time ago and would mix my own dubbing, wet it with spit and add dyed rabbit fur or synthetics until I get the wet shade I wanted. Many dry fly dubbing are synthetics but I still think they get darker when wet and they also change a bit with floatants.

I've read that sythetics don't get darker but my personal experience is that some definitely do. I use a nylon yarn for my serendipities and it gets darker when wet. Dazzleaire sparkle yarn gets darket when wet. So don't beleiove that synthetics don't get darker when wet. It is such a simple test so wet the synthetic and let your own eyes judge.

So if the natural you are imitating is wet, I match the color with material that are that color when wet. If it is a dry fly, I match the color when the material is dry.

I personally don't try to match the dry fly material with floatant on it. I don't know that floatant I am going to use, and after the fly has been taken by a fish, the "dry" fly is "wet" anyway and the color has changed.

 

[SerialNumber]

Would it be OK to bring up resin's effect on color, or would that be another thread? And not just on dubbing -- since most probably don't resin their dubbing -- but on any absorbent material, especially thread? It always bugs me when I tie something and then proceed to ruin the shade or the contrasts with UV resin. It comes out a grayish, brownish mess, color-wise. This coloration issue really dampened my initial enthusiasm for resin.

Once I did a test with 15 or so different color threads, tying them onto a wire one after the other in half-inch long sections, then applying resin to half of each colored section, to get a before-and-after picture. The results were discouraging. I'm hesitant to apply resin to any lightly-colored fly. Then again, maybe I'm thinking too much about how these colors appear when dry, and not when wet? Maybe the post-resin color is closer to what the color would be when wet by the river?

 

[silver creek]

Post the photos and lets see the change.

 

[Unknownflyman]

Silver creek did you also present to the forum, how colors are viewed by the river color as well? I think you were the only guy Ive ever met that presented information on color choices for tannin stained water. Was that from Gary Borger? I forgot.

 

[silver creek]

I don't think that was me