Renaissance Redneck: A rhapsody of color

By DAVID KITTREDGE
By David Kittredge

It is thought that the human eye can detect 10 million different colors. I wonder who is keeping the tally. Some computer screens are pixilated with 16 million different colors. Something doesn’t quite add up. This is quite amazing when in reality we humans only can see the three primary colors: red, blue and green. These colors are then mixed in our brains to the quantity of 10 million different colors. But when trying to fathom the 16 million colors projected on a color monitor, this seems to be a bit of technological overkill. It is believed that not all humans see colors in the same way, so I suppose this technicolor overload covers all the optical perception bases.

I started thinking about color while I was tying flies for fishing recently. You can tie flies to catch fish or you can tie flies to catch fishermen. When I was in the business of tying and selling flies, I tried to tie flies that did both. Some trolling flies have eye shattering combinations of color like the Pearl Charm with a mixture of scorching hot pink and chartreuse or fluorescent light green feathers. This fly was concocted by a fish guide in Maine and when I first clapped eyes on it, I had to squint due to the unseemly color combo. As I pondered the near imponderable, my instincts told me to trust the color choices of the Maine gilly, so I decided to tie a few of these streamers for the shop with the thought that it would certainly stand out in the display of various streamers About a month later one of my regular customers stopped by my shop before heading out onto Pleasant Lake to fish. The fly caught his eye, and apparently, he was not totally abhorred by its garish demeanor and decided to purchase one. He and his buddy hit the lake with the fish scaring fly in tow. After their outing they stopped by the shop, wide eyed and jacked up with accounts of fighting two huge rod bending salmon, neither of which they landed, they had forgotten their net. What we humans had perceived as being humorously ugly the fish were attracted to. I have also used the fly with some success, but I had to wear sunglasses to tie the fly onto my line, to protect my retinas from being overly stimulated.

Fish don’t perceive color the way we humans do, especially when they are deep in the water column. When fishing on top of the water, the dry fly needs to exactly match the natural bugs hatching and laying eggs on the surface in color and size. When you fish deeper in the rivers, lakes and ponds, some colors disappear as the lure or fly descends. Fish see the color red near the top of the water column, but this color fades to gray the deeper it is fished. Colors that remain vibrant in deeper waters are indigo, yellow and white. Another color that remains constant no matter the depth it is fished is olive green, which is a mixture of indigo and yellow.

I have an antique lure that was hand carved out of a piece of white shell which has an iridescent coloring on the concave side. This iridescence shimmers when held at different angles in the sunlight with all the colors of the rainbow. It is a beautiful piece of primitive artwork which I am tempted to try one of these days when fishing is slow. I think it would work well when fished near the bottom for lake trout, but I am hesitant because I wouldn’t want to lose it in a snag with Mother Earth. Many natural bird feathers also have this quality of incandescent shimmering colors caused by the refraction of light of the microscopic barbules that act like a prism. The basic black crow’s feather isn’t merely black but glistens with tiny gemstones of sapphire blue, emerald green and ruby red when held in the sunlight at differing angles.

Colors that seem to work well on some days don’t catch on other days. I have had fishermen tell me that large olive wooly buggers sometimes work well on Lake Winnipesauke while fishing for landlocked salmon for a couple of hours in the morning and then they have to try other patterns and colors to get a strike. I have had fishermen tell me when trolling for rainbow trout that they have had to change flies often to keep catching bows. To the contrary, I have found when fishing for rainbow that once you find a fly that catches fish on a certain day then the fly will work for the remaining four or five hours that I am on the body of water. To me rainbow aren’t as finicky as a salmon and other species of trout. Perhaps it merely comes down to the fact that rainbow are more aggressive in their feeding habits.

At last I am equipped and fully legal to troll with my boat. I was hindered this year with the quarantine and did not want to enter any public buildings to purchase registrations or licenses. When I finally realized I could do my registrations online; I purchased a new printer although it took me an hour to figure out where the power button was located. It does not tell you in the user’s manual the location thereof, the manufacturer doesn’t want people firing the thing up with the Styrofoam and plastic inserts still in place that support the toner cartridge during shipping. They were protecting the machine from trigger happy geezers such as myself. And while we are on the subject of color, the machine is black, the power button is black and is located near the bottom of the printer casing. Gee willikers, my peepers don’t work as well as they used to, Sonny!