What do salmon see ?

[kercock]

Some years ago,I tied some very small copper tubes,like quarter inch long,using only dyed sqirrel of various colours. The object at the time was to get a fly down fast in very fast water. The conditions were......Very low water,bright sunshine and gin clear water. Anyway I tied on a tube ,had a cast and to my astonishment a salmon came to the fly out of a gully, it almost touched the fly but made no attempt to take it and dropped back into the gully. I cast again and bugger me another salmon (smaller) came to the fly and did the same thing !. There were five or six fish in that gully,when they each had had a look at the fly they stopped coming to it,so I changed over to a different colour,back they came one at a time varying from almost touching the fly to coming to about a foot from it. By this time I was counting the casts and as soon as a cast got no reaction I changed the fly colour .
Well,in 50 casts I got a reaction 26 times,started changing more often and overall the salmon came to the fly 67 times out of a hundred casts.. It was fascinating stuff. It showed me that fish do react to a change in colour, it most certaily showed me that a salmon will come to a fly much more often than I ever knew, you see that because of the clear water,I could see the salmon reaction and they,could without doubt in my mind,see me. which (I think) played a big part in the fish not taking the fly. Have any of you people out there experienced anything along the same lines

[turrifftackle]

I once had a salmon come out from under the shady bank and look at the fly- as it passed over its head the fish turned round swam down past the fly and waited until the fly reached its new position and grabbed it.
This was a big tube fly in low water conditions and due to the weight of the fly there was a belly in the floating line.. The fish held hold of the fly for a good 15 seconds andf then I began to retrieve the belly and when tight the fish just opened its mouth and let the fly go.!!!

Have also seen fish bat at spinners with their tails- unbelievable.

Frank

[exerod]

I once stood no more than 15 feet from a fish that was laying in water no more than two and a half feet deep. There is no way that the fish could have not seen me yet it rose to and followed a small silver stoat three or four times without taking. It then lost interest and just lay there so I tried every other fly I had. After forty minutes I put the silver stoat back on and it took straight away!

Spinning in deep still pools on a couple of occasions I've seen grilse follow and nip the tails on a flying condom, which is rather frustrating.

Tight lines

Andy