[LWJ]

I found myself on a small, coastal Oregon Cutthroat stream yesterday with a fly rod in my hand. I did ok with my standard small stream fly - a yellow humpy. Nothing special, they seem to land dumb fish on a consistent basis.

Things slowed down a bit and I found myself digging in my flybox for something different. I put on a purple haze. A purple dry fly that doesn't imitate anything but has a crazy cult following. Before yesterday, I had never caught a fish on one and thought the hype was BS.

I cast up into a slow, languid pool, right at the final bit of the pool, where there should be some fish. There were. I caught 30-40 small, native Cutts. It was like fishing in a stocked pond.

Here is the weird part. There weren't ANY fish jumping or looking up. None. Yet, when I cast, they hit the fly 30++% of the time.

Which tells me it is one heck of a fly for that river on that day - it changed fish from column feeding to top feeding. Sort of amazing.

Similar, was a magic fly an old timer handed my son last month. I was catching nothing for days but my son hammered them until he lost the one magic fly. Which, again, looked like nothing on/in the water.

So what is the point I am making? I find it amazing that something that is 100% foreign to a predator can be more attractive than real prey. I am certain there are examples outside of trout fishing but this simply strikes me as fascinating.