Discussions

Any trout fisherman, especially those who fish with dry flies, will tell you that trout possess acute vision. Scientists will agree. How is it then that a large brown trout will see this – And accept it as this? The answer lies not with the trout’s vision, but with his perception; that is, how the trout’s brain registers the sensory input of vision and matches it to an established pattern. As fly fishermen we have for centuries looked at the thick hackle of a standard upright dry fly and assumed that the trout sees the hundreds of light points breaking the surface as the six legs of a mayfly. That astounds me! A fish with such fine vision will see all the hundreds of those discrete hackle points. However, while the trout can see the difference between six sparkling points and hundreds, the trout can’t discern or perceive the difference.