Exploring LaFontaine's Color Theory of Attractors
this goes way beyond bright day, bright fly...
April 2025
Last year we highlighted Gary LaFontaine's book: Dry Flies: New Angles where he applies analytical methods to breakdown and assess what repeatedly triggers rises.
He outlines ideas about which styles of flies work best for different water types, breaks down the sequence of visual cues fish pick up on during their rise, and outlines a color theory to refine fly color based on surrounding light. Each idea backed by field observation (including scuba) and scientifically inspired trial and error. It's truly an eye opening book and still relevant, but somehow the ideas feel lost to the past.
Due West Anglers
One thing stood out from his book though: he spent next to no time explaining his methods or pretty much anything else a scientifically inclined mind would want more details on. Not that we didn't trust what he did write, but our feeble ecology brains admittedly struggled with some of the assertions that he made on light physics. It felt weird to leave those explanations out. No problem though, we decided it would be easy enough to head out to the river and do some experimentation on our own to explore Gary's ideas first hand. This article supplements the video below, which shows first hand footage of our experiments. So before we continue, you may want to check out the video for yourself.
Unfortunately, though we tried to apply our scientific lean toward the topic, our efforts fall short of capturing enough to build a wholistic conclusion. Without a dedicated team of underpaid grad students to sample all year long, it's probably best to leave any conclusions up to the observer. Either way, members will get a full breakdown of process, and the most striking findings after the video.
What did you get from this? What do you think the footage shows? Let us know!