JSzymczyk

Cutlasses, of course. Weak hand. My right shoulder is trashed from three surgeries and wouldn't last. In the end, if someone honestly DID figure out "the mind of the trout" (oh, let's open up the "brain vs. mind" can of prop-wash.....), just as if someone ever did honestly figure out "the mind of a woman", it would take all the fun out of life, wouldn't it? Anyway, I have the highest respect for Dr. Silvercreek, stick to your guns and shift the burden of proof--- all your examples of "operant conditioning" are still positive reinforcement / reward based. I don't see a way to present the fact, any other way, that EVERY SINGLE TROUT WHICH HAS BEEN CAUGHT ON A FLY SUGGESTING A KNOWN FOOD SOURCE, HAS "IGNORED" THE (relatively) GIANT STEEL HOOK STICKING OUT IT'S ASS END. I'm not a classically educated man, but I fail to see how any more data could make that statement more, or less, true. I suppose the data shows that as far as humans can understand, the answer to the original question is... yes, (some) fish can see UV glue. IF they possess a "mind", then at least a large fraction of them think what they are seeing is worth eating or attacking. Good for us.

I have a weird habit of tearing things down to a pile of screws, cleaning, checking, honing, assembling, lubing, and making things better than they were. Vises, guns, reels, bikes, whatever. Probably once a year I tear down my vises and go thru everything.

You "know" only that the researcher made the conclusion that operant conditioning was occurring... and that you agree with the conclusion. You cannot truly know the reason the fish changed it's behavior. Your example shows fish exhibiting positive feedback (easy nutrition) but not negative feedback (stress, injury, fatigue from trying to eat a hook) Good play, this is a bottomless rabbit hole. It's a circular argument. Same as the UV polymer visibility. Yes the biology indicates that certain fish are capable of having sensors stimulated by the frequencies of energy it reflects- and possibly behavioral responses can be observed, but to definitively state how their brains interpret the information is not provable. at the end of the day ENOUGH fish ignore the giant steel hook on an otherwise reasonable suggestion of a food item to keep us going. Flies created with UV resins catch fish. Flies created without UV resins catch fish.

a lot of good work in this post. not bad for a Marine.

it also occurs to me, if you think "fly tying is like sex", you are doing one or or the other monumentally wrong......

color and form - some very experienced people are adamant that color is very minor factor, far less important than other variables - both play a role in the fish's choice. Degree of importance aside, what the fish interprets compared to what we interpret when we both "see" with our eyes are obviously not the same. Whether or not they interpret what they see when they see a glob of UV-activated as something worth striking (for whatever reason) is settled. My post went down the road of pointing out that we as fly tyers and fishermen (women, and whatever else, I can't keep up with the times) get wrapped around the axle quite often on details which can seem insignificant in the big picture. we worry about thread color on a #20 dry fly as if it actually matters, when there are an infinite number of variables involved in every presentation--- not least of which is the (relatively) giant steel hook sticking out the ass-end of every fly we tie..

Very true. Over 40 years tying here. "Speed" is not a valid goal. Sparse flies catch fish but it all fish cared about was sparse, hardware lures wouldn't work at all. There is NOTHING new in fly tying or fly fishing. If you have done it, someone else did it before you, decided it wasn't worth it and moved on. Maybe they were wrong.

They ignore the giant hook sticking out the ass-end of every single fly we tie but we worry about if they can see a specific wavelength of light......

it would only be an accurate answer if the question was how many of a specific size and pattern would be tied with a spool of thread. Simplest way I can think of is tie your fly without using any cement, cut the thread without whip finishing at the end, unwind it all and measure the thread. ASSume the 100yds is an accurate measure of the thread on the spool, standardize your units, divide the spool length by the length you used, and you got your answer.

really none of my business, but here we are.... if you're a federal employee with any sort of public trust position (as an accountant that is pretty much a no-brainer) you don't want to get jammed up with the IRS - the excise and income taxes surrounding sporting goods are enough of a bother to keep most people away from selling anything. I was looking into potentially selling some lures I make and it's just not worth the hassle for a couple dollars here and a couple dollars there. If you're "production tying for side money" then by law, somebody has to be paying the excise tax on the flies.

I've spent my entire life doing PMs on equipment from hand tools to multimillion dollar transmitters to all sorts of other systems. Preventive Maintenance is a way of life, unless you're someone who likes to "fix it until it's broke".... I tear apart my vises whenever I feel like it, surely way more than required. Cleaned and Lubed makes life better. In so many ways. Foster, put a fuel shut off valve in the line before the carb and run it dry every time after use... if I remember correctly it's about a $7 part and ends the whole worry.

that darn "work" bs has been getting in the way of my fly tying and all sorts of other important things for the last 30-some years.

about a hundred years ago, I made a frame that attaches to my vise stem out of fairly heavy mild steel wire, I put a small trash bag in it, hold it in place with four magnets, and job done. Clippings and cut offs fall directly into the bag. Only really messy operations such as trimming deer hair bugs get out of control. Easy, clean, convenient. I'll try to remember to take a pic tomorrow.

Just moved house. Again. I do remember when all my tying equipment and materials fit into an 18x18x18 cardboard box, and all my possessions including tackle, a 12ga shotgun, a 22 rifle, and my mountain bike fit under the tonneau cover of my pickup truck. 30 some years and 14 moves later, I'm hoping to settle for a while. I'm unpacking stuff and trying to set up "my" room, fly tying, workbench for stuff, computer desk, work comp for teleworking during covid which sucks horribly, etc etc. I'm amazed at how much tackle I have, and surprised at how much fly tying materials-- and wonder how it is possible that there is always something I seem to need that I don't have....

Wondering why someone would pay that much for a ripoff copy of the mysterious coveted LAW vise.

to me the top left looks like opossum, and center right looks like gray fox. Call the Discovery Channel and tell them you have some chupacabra and sasquatch hair. They'll make a TV show out of you.

when I lived in northern Maine and Alaska, with very long winters, I used to carefully wrap my fly lines off the reels onto 5 gal buckets, after cleaning them, to store for the winter. I have absolutely no evidence that it made the slightest difference.

I have a 50's era Phillipson glass rod which was my Dad's. It is rated "HDH" which loosely translates to a 6 weight DT. It casts well with both a 5wt DT and a 6wtDT. I disagree with the above that DT are only good for short range. I'm not any sort of expert caster, but do just fine with a DT. Old glass rods cast differently than contemporary carbon rods, but they still cast. I took it out on a local creek one day this past summer for the first time in many years. I just don't want to risk breaking it, but I know the old man would rather it be used than it be stored away in a tube inside a closet. I also learned as a kid with a level line, on that very rod. I guess we weren't smart enough to know how terrible it was, so we just learned to cast, learned to fish, and caught loads and loads of fish.

fish more, ride my bike more. Same as all the other years. Same as all the other years this thing called "work" gets in the way. Having never been less than full-time employed for the last 34 years, obviously I'm too dumb to figure out how to make it happen. Just bought a house less than a mile from the "famous" Letort Spring Run, so I'll need to work on my super-smart holier-than-thou trouts skills. Moving house AGAIN right now, getting settled, trying to get a deck built so I can use my grill, hopefully to grill some trout I catch.... Thanks to one of my kayak fishing buddies who got back into fly fishing in a big way in 2020, I was back at it quite a bit last year. I got a 20+ lb Musky on my five weight while fishing for bass, so that was a bucket list fish I won't likely repeat. Honestly my FF GOAL for the upcoming year is to get on a bunch of good sized bluegills or crappies and have enough for a fish fry. It's been a few years since I was able to do that. This year I am hoping to get a springtime trip up to lake erie, and again in the fall. It's not looking good.

right there is the other edge of the sword I guess. I'm a weirdo (in more ways than one) in that I've never bought flies, never seriously considered selling flies although I have come up with some super effective patterns, and never refrained from sharing. If I had a brain cell that worked like a businessman's maybe it would be different. I suppose there are people who have had their patterns "poached" by another tyer and commercialized. That would tend to chap one's nads.

Love it. That is, in my opinion, a pattern that suggests so many food sources for so many species of fish, that you could use it successfully almost anywhere.

I agree. $29 is a good price. I just took a leap and bought a #2 Metz saddle (black) from JStockard. I've written before about how the Metz #2 saddles from the late 80's and 90's were the absolute pinnacle of palmering hackle for wets (woolly buggers, woolly worms, other wets applications) and I still have some of it. I received the saddle and it is, simply, not the same. It's good hackle, but "it ain't what it used to be"... Our (G)overnor and his girlfriend "Rachel" are a comedy show. at the same time, the reported covid numbers are worse than what they were in the spring. More testing, better testing ?? I'm not smart enough to know. All I know is I just closed on a new house which is less than a mile from the Letort Spring Run, I got a killer interest rate because I'm not a total moron, and I need to learn to catch little wild browns which have apparently spent more years in school than I have. Screw it, I'll continue to work, which I've done for my entire life uninterrupted, continue to pay my taxes, and continue to try to go fishing. Try being the operative word.

you guys waste no time, and every one of the flies posted are kick-ass. The talent on display here is amazing and humbling.

Looks good !! Good equipment takes care of you as long as you take care of it.

It was the first fly I was told to tie as a kid, and mastery of it holds several foundational principles used throughout the world of fly tying. Very VERY effective in many environments as well. It seems like a "simple" fly but the best ones always are. I wouldn't even step out the door to go fly fishing without some WWs, and Black with Grizzly is the #1 go-to color combo. I disagree with your history of the style though. The origins of this style pre-date any fly tyer ever setting foot in the Ozarks. It was widely in use in the East before the 50's. Also it is a generalist- it suggests a wide range of things which look edible and doesn't "imitate" anything other than perhaps a small fuzzy caterpillar (woolly worm...) which might fall into the water.