Tying flies has always been more of an outlet for me. While there are times I tie just to fill boxes for an upcoming trip, 90% of the time, I tie for the love of it, and having flies to fish is a side effect. It’s often been said, tying is the river away from the river. This is why I have no problem spending an hour on one fly, and if it turns out I don’t like it, I’ll trash it and start over. Fishing flies I have full confidence in is top priority. Steelhead are way too awesome to fish flies that aren’t worthy.
When we tie for Steelhead, color tends to be the biggest factor we focus on. Most Steelhead flies are ties in the 2 to 4″ range, leaving size less of a scope to focus on. The difference between a 3″ and a 3-1/4″ fly doesn’t really play a huge role in overall effectiveness, but color, and color blending can be, and is a huge factor. You will hear some people say that color doesn’t matter, but you won’t hear that from me. I am 100% convinced that color makes a huge difference
Now for the point of this post. Getting the most out of the color you put into your flies. Simply put, without light penetration, you don’t get color. As you tie, think sparse, and less is more. If you overdress your bugs and put too much material in, you block light, and essentially loose the colors you put in. This is very common with materials like marabou. typically 3 or 4 wraps is way better and the whole plume.
Here are a couple videos we did with underwater color tests to give a visual on how important light is in relation to colors showing up underwater
One more think you can do at the bench to help with color is to replace you lights with a daylight lamp, rather than cool white or warm white. While lamps can never give the same light quality as the sun, you will be able to see the true color spectrum and will be able to blend colors more accurately. Standard house lights are on the yellow end of light spectrum, and cool whites are on the blue side. look for a 5600K daylight lamp to get true color