Month: March 2010

5 New Fishing Sayings and Quotes – Mar 26, 2010

Once again, swinging a hook through the vast libraries of fishing verbiage has hooked up 5 new quotes on things fishy for your undoubted pleasure. Numbers 936 -940

Two picks again, and pretty disparate – the first an idealised and perhaps romantic view of lakes, the second, well lets just say, it is perhaps meandering more down my track to pithy perception.

“The lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye and looking into which, the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“Purdiest country I ever did see. Makes a feller feel all powdered up inside his head; makes a feller want to spit whiskey.”
– Scott Waldie – Travers Trilogy

Could be that Thoreau was writing while drinking what Waldie was spitting?

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Trout Night Vision

I received a number of questions arising from my articles on night fishing, about trout’s night vision.

In general a trout’s night vision is very good, even on the darkest of nights. There is some evidence that trout’s vision actually changes to black and white in the dark.

One thing that is key to a trout’s night vision is a strongly enhanced ability to detect contrast and silhouette. So it is probable trout will stay lower in the water than the likely prey. Looking up towards what light there is, will make it even easier to detect prey.

So trout may spend most of the night near the bottom of the river, or lake if in the shallows, looking up to locate prey. What light there is, (and there always is light, it is just that humans can’t see it) will silhouette prey or your fly against, or on, the water surface. It is possible that trout can see larger prey easier at night; think baitfish, frogs, mice and large dry flies.
14 lb brown taken at night

Larger fish, say trout over 5 or 6lbs, seem to do much of their feeding at night. It is probable that this is more true of big brown trout than rainbows, and it is my experience, and the experience of my fishing circle, that big trout, browns and rainbows, are more often caught at night than in daylight. (14lb night-caught brown alongside).

While the above is related to night vision, ‘the lateral line’ should not be forgotten. The sensors along the lateral line can pick up tiny signals from prey, and when combined with night vision, all help a trout find prey.

Night Fishing Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Posted by Tony Bishop in fly fishing, trout information

5 new fishing quotes and sayings – Mar 2, 2010

Once more we delve into the depths of fishing literature to hook out pearls of wisdom about fishing. Numbers 931 – 935 are waiting your perusal.

And again I have two picks from today’s selection:

first from the grand-dame of fly fishing, Joan Salvato Wulff in ‘Thoughts of a Fly Fisherman – Or Two’

The woods and waters of the outdoors became my church, a place where I could examine my thoughts and feel I was connected to all living things. This feeling is especially strong when, with rod in hand, I am wading a river for trout or salmon…where everything makes sense, where there is nothing but truth. There will be no disenchantment with this church.”

And some keen perception from Paul Quinnett in ‘Pavlov’s Trout’

The purpose of a fishing trip is not to catch fish. Bringing home meat is important, but it is more symbolic than necessary, as the new morality of catch-and-release has shown. What is important is what happens between people on fishing trips, especially between uncles and nephews, fathers and sons, old men in general and young boys in particular, it is one of the few times men are together without women.”

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes