Fly Fishing

Reel_Hookers · Last edited by Reel_Hookers on Sat 10/17/09 7:37 am; edited 1 time in total

What fly color combination work best for fly fishing in freshwater? I am doing a science fair and i need to know. Please anwser the poll.

jeremy · Location: Portland, Maine

I assume you are talking about streamers for "fresh water fly patterns" .. Amongst, the options you had listed - I chose "all white." If you had an "all olive option" i would have chosen that. But, here where I live in Maine and fish freshwater for trout and salmon an "all white" fly is a pretty safe bet (especially as a searching pattern) because smelt (baitfish) is one of the primary food sources that trout and salmon feed on here in Maine. So, "all white" soft hackle streamers or even "all white" wooly buggers and a myriad of other "all white" (or close to it) streamer flies can be very effective.

kory_k · Location: New York, NY

Like Jeremy, I assume you mean streamers. Because you didn't put all black, I did not vote as for me that is the number one color. Also, gold would be a good choice. I like all white as well, but for me it is behind black.

AvidDavid · Location: Long Island, NY

R_H:

I am an avid flyfisherman and am trained as a scientist (biophysics, physiology, reproductive biology). I think that science projects (my wife is a high school teacher that teaches Science Research) generally are focused on the student obtaining some data and then being able to present the data in a fashion that helps others to learn some general info that may be useful.

I believe that many on this site would find the color info to be useful; however, in the few responses that you have already obtained, it is clear that the participants have needed to assume that you are restricting your survey to streamers. This may or may not have been your intention.

I would like to suggest something that may or may not be considered helpful. (I do this largely because I know from experience that a scientific study is seldom really completed! One almost always realizes part-way through that some changes need to be made based on the preliminary results. So, don't feel that it is inappropriate to change the survey early on since there is already some helpful information available! In addition, I believe that the whole philosophy expressed on this site is such that the web guru(s) who run this will be willing to make some changes that could improve your survey and may improve the amount you learn for your science project.) For what it is worth, I suggest that you redesign your survey to include a few more color options (possibly restricted to single colors to restrict the number of possible answers) but most importantly to ask the questions in at least 3 categories: Streamers, Dry flies, and nymphs/wet flies. I think it would be useful to all to know the results of all of these.

One of the most difficult problems with survey studies is assuring that you collect enough data to make the results valuable - or representative of the entire population of flyfisher persons (in this case). I believe that if everyone understands what they are answering and if everyone's favorite color is actually present in the list you are more likely to get responses, thereby increasing the number of responses and increasing the value of the data. (There are graduate school courses in survey design, so don't be discouraged that your first attempt may not be working out just how you initially wanted. It's all part of learning about science. Sometimes the best teacher we have is the mistakes that we make.)

Good luck. I'm sure that your have chosen this topic because you are really interested in fly fishing. If you get lots of responses, that too should be reinforcing and may spur you on to really get involved in the data analysis. Regardless, you will learn a number of things that can make science both "fun" and, at times, "not so fun!"

AvidDavid