Next time some old codger tells you, “they was thick as flies, big ones, not that little crap what’s in there now” … rather than nodding respectfully you can just backhand the old gasbag …
… and while he’s recovering his dentures you can retort, “Yea, but they were dumber then, and you ate all the idjits or toed them into the brush, and now we’ve got nothing but small fish with twice the IQ!”
Until now, scientists knew that birds – like great tits, zebra finches and European blackbirds – could be picky about new types of food, but hadn’t seen it in other animals.
The new findings suggest that fussiness could be universal among all predators.
After countless decades of weeding fish based on bright stuff, shiny stuff, and now drab stuff – is the selective fish something of our own creation?
As size and aggression determine feeding lie, are the largest fish grabbing one of their smaller brethren – hurling him out of the rock’s protection with the commandment, “try them orange ones and tell me if they hurt …”
Which neatly corroborates why we hook the smaller fish first – and why they rush from the safety of the shade to slay themselves on a Parmachene Belle.
Us fly tiers are constantly adding a bit of this to a dab of that – to outwit the most finicky tastebuds, and when we finally strike paydirt and catch everything within six hundred yards, the moment we bring our pals and promise wholesale slaughter – or return the following weekend expecting similar, the fly doesn’t work.
By then every fish has heard that them wiggly pink things are a free root canal.
The team dyed the sticklebacks’ favourite prey – a tiny plankton-like crustacean called Daphnia – with either green or brown food colouring. Once each fish had got used to either green or brown Daphnia, the researchers introduced the different coloured Daphnia to the fish.
The researchers found that when they encountered the new colour, the fish responded in two ways. They either ate it, which eventually drove the new colour extinct; or they avoided it, which ultimately let this new colour dominate the population.
Which suggests that Ernie Schwiebert got the entire thing ass backwards, and all those same colored bugs emerging at dusk are the bugs that taste like spinach …
We should be matching what we don’t see …
One hundred years ago everyone was fishing attractors, and while Grandpa played fast and loose with the fish population he was killing everything with a taste for red, orange, jungle cock, or tinsel.
Your Dad saw the tail end of the Attractor Turkey Shoot and killed whatever Granddad missed – until the 1950’s when big colorful wet flies went extinct as all the fish were trained to avoid them.
Ernie Schweibert was man enough to try some drab concoction out of dog hair and owl feathers, knocked snot out of the fish, and became the New Messiah …
… now, all we’re doing is ensuring whatever Pop missed gets kilt, so your kids can catch less, lose interest, until some new Holy Man emerges.
Neo. The One.
All we need to sleep soundly is a bit of research on how long fish retain these multi-generational messages, or whether they carve petroglyphs in the cobble near the bottom.
Sure it’s scary, but not half as scary as reading Matching The Hatch backwards and finding out the double haul is dead.
Tags: Parmachene Belle, attractor flies, Ernest Schweibert, Matching the Hatch, dumb fish, sins of our fathers, fly fishing, fly fishing humor
So does your cover of “matching the hatch” have Oliver Edwards barefoot?
You forgot this part, I know its painful, but it belongs here too; that only the small & slow growing are left to reproduce, and by reproducing earlier because there is no competitition for prime habitat, and they thus stunt their own growth earlier.
ugh. I vote for me to be the “new messiah” I’m bringing nothing new, just thought I was as good a choice as anyone… I’m just sayin.