Had 10 fish this morning. Leader was made up of Drennan Double Strength.

Don't know what colour it is but the fish seemed to like it.

When Barbel fishing I use Power Pro braid which tends to have a washed out greeny white colour and the fish don't seem to mind that either.

Don't think fish have to many brains so don't think they know what's what.

 

They say red is the first colour to be invisible under water. I know lots of carp fishers that swear by it. On the other hand I spent a long time trying to disguise my leader on a small still water today. I used Orvis mud, rubbing with grass, and stones from the shore rubbed on the tippet. None worked! Yet I still caught fish on what was a flat calm mill pond. I missed several lost one and caught one, all with a leader that looked like the great wall of China from space. After fishing with old chaps for a while Im starting to realise its all about the Fly, the cast and just some luck of the fishing gods. The fish I lost there was a slight breeze covering the great wall. The fish I caught was with a black spider fly (during a midge hatch) with my best cast of the day onto a flat calm and was taken as soon as it hit the water.
Take from this what you will but Ive seen a lot of fish taken by old schoolers who read the flies and can cast!

 

red things do not become invisible. they just stop looking red....

 

That's quite true. Everything with any energy in our world is light. Its not that it contains light its that it reflects it to show us colour. All energy is light. Do you see X-rays or gamma rays? No but they are light just in a much higher frequency than is visible to us. SO if they stop looking red what do they look like. Its a question of things reflecting light and looking a certain colour. It is proven that red things are the first to stop reflecting light under water due to the frequency of light that makes red things red not been able to penetrate water very deeply.

 

They may not see colour the way we do but the rods and cones in a trout's eye indicates that they can probably detect differences in colour far better than we can.

I am in the "prefer clear" camp but I have used coloured and the fish still ate the fly. I've even used twisted black horse hair, which didn't put the fish off either.

richard

 

I once had an interesting experience of clear vs Maxima brown. 4-0 to me (clear) on the first drift using dries. He had fish coming up and looking before swirling away. Eventually the penny dropped and chummy switched to clear, but it was too late. I qualified & he didn't.

Been a confirmed believer in clear since.

 

Remember having a wonderful evening on the dry in my first season. By accident I only had a suitable tippet strength in something called Jurassic. It was as close to black as brown could be.

Inbetween then and now I've used Maxima Chameleon for all parts of built up leaders and tippets. It's brown.

Just run out of tippet so there is sort of a over-lap as I try Preston Reflo which is clear, more supple and at 0.11mm/ 3.5lbs PS should be perfect for my eight inch trout. So far no difference I can tell except more breaks at the knot without any reason.