I can remember listening intently while it was explained that attractor flies have relied on the color red, as it was the color of blood and should excite any predator.

The real truth has been revealed that anything in red is twice as seductive as other colors, and while fly fishing’s founding fathers insisted it was blood, they were really playing fast and loose with a fish’s emotions.

Simply wearing the color red or being bordered by the rosy hue makes a man more attractive and sexually desirable to women, according to a series of studies by researchers at the University of Rochester and other institutions. And women are unaware of this arousing effect.

Naturally the American Museum of Fly Fishing blames all them Victorian eurotrash for another in a long string of sports scandals, all the while convinced Theodore Gordon was both chaste and pure of heart. Anyone actually reading Gordo’s book on dry flies knows he was a cocksman, as every third etching has some fulsome yet anonymous babe draped on the bank.

For the collector it means any fly fishing book authored in the last century is liable to be fuel for a puritanical purge that should drive their value into orbit.

Along with this learned association between red and status, the authors point to the biological roots of human behavior. In non-human primates, like mandrills and gelada baboons, red is an indicator of male dominance and is expressed most intensely in alpha males. Females of these species mate more often with alpha males, who in turn provide protection and resources.

“When women see red it triggers something deep and probably biologically engrained,” explains Elliot. “We say in our culture that men act like animals in the sexual realm. It looks like women may be acting like animals as well in the same sort of way.”

– via Science Daily

… and it’s obvious there’s a few loose ends, as most women seeing red are possessed by something deep and primitive, but it’s usually thrown crockery and a couple of snapped fly rods that results.

The volume of fly fishing magazines whose cover is adorned by stern looking Marlboro-men wearing red shirts and dirty ball caps? About 87%, which translates into nearly 46% of the sales destined for beauty parlors and woman that aren’t angry yet …

females attracted to red, the lady in red, fly fishing, attractor flies, Theodore Gordon, cocksman, fly fishing humor, the color of blood