While the balance of nature might be perfection, most of its inhabitants are less so. Us fishermen are often knotted up in our notions of behavior and only underwater footage or other form of proof is needed to get us thinking outside the conventional.

Utah Fly Guides posted a video of Green Drake nymphs struggling to the surface – and as the video plainly demonstrates, they’re tumbling around in the water column and in the unfamiliar medium stability only comes with a solid anchor.

If this is what the fish sees; first a flash of light belly, then a split second of dark back, enduring all that effort to separate colors may be worth the effort. Then again, woven bodies involve considerable pain and suffering and share a certain stiffness coupled with a tendency to rotate around the hook with abuse.

With an upcoming foray into the Pristine scheduled, and a couple of ideas, I brushed the Orange and Pink materials out of the way to see what I could dream up.

As always efficiency is better than painstaking detail, and if they prove successful you’ll be better off with a couple dozen versus a couple period…

I started with the traditional color for the Drakes I’ve fished over in California, and the color of its underbelly. I made a quick blend of 1/2 belly – 1/2 back, and 3/4 belly – 1/4 back, then used all four colors to dub the body in short stages.

The effect is a nice harmony – a color spectrum that shifts from light to dark (in Olives) – and should make both back and belly colors visible to matter what attitude the fish has to the fly.

In watching the video a couple times, I noticed the belly color offers the starkest contrast with the surrounding water – allowing me to pick out the “food” from the bits of leaves rather quickly.

We’ll never know what the trout sees, but transitioning colors in this manner yields no additional complexity and a rather striking end result.

Tags: Green Drakes, fly tying, color transition, trout fishing, blended dubbing, fly tying complexity,