How Trout See, with Jason Randall

The Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast

James Hathaway

Bass, Fishing, Bonefish, Wilderness, Flyfishing, Trout, How To, Steelhead, Bluegill, Fly, Orvis, Sports, Salmon, Panfish, Education, Rosenbauer

4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2024

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Can trout see color? Can they see UV light? How does a trout's window on the outside world affect how they feed and how they notice predators like us? How can a trout see so well at night and also in bright light when they have no eyelids, and their pupils don't constrict? Jason Randall [31:10] is an experienced fly fisher and scientist, and he stays up on the latest scientific papers on trout and also talks to leading scientists, and is one of the best at distilling this information for us ordinary anglers. This is a fascinating podcast and Jason does a great job of explaining trout vision.

In the Fly Box this week, we have some great questions but also a bunch of great tips from listeners, including:

When water is low and the sun is bright, what tactics do you recommend for Great Lakes steelhead?
Four great fly-tying tips from a tier in the UK
I am looking at the 10-foot Helios rods. For all-around fishing, should I get the 3-weight F model or the 4-weight D model?
A guide from the mid-Atlantic shares tips on targeting snakeheads
A young fly tier asks for advice on a moderately priced vise for tying bass flies
Why do my 9-foot 6X knotless leaders keep breaking?
A new fly fisher from Ohio recounts a wonderful experience he had on the river
A listener provides some great tips on rooftop rod carriers
A listener asks for suggestions for a book on the history of trout in North America

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi and welcome to the Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast this is your host Tom
0:14.1	Rosenbower and my guest this week is a guy who I've been trying to get on the
0:19.1	podcast for quite a while we both been busy but we finally got it together.
0:24.5	Jason Randall is an angler and an author and a teacher and he's a he's a biologist by profession and he is one of the best people at staying up on the scientific literature and reading it and then distilling that information
0:48.0	and bringing it to non-academics like us and helping us understand Trout more and helping us understand how to catch them
0:58.1	and why they behave the way they do.
1:00.7	I use Jason's books a lot in researching topics when I'm doing my own
1:06.5	writing and I hope I credit him when I do that but anyway he's a fascinating guy and the topic of today's
1:14.8	podcast is Trout Vision, you know, do Trout See Color, do they see UV, how do they
1:20.8	spot us? Can they see us everywhere? And how do they see at night and then how do they see in bright sunlight? How do they adjust? Because they don't have eyelids. So anyway it's a fascinating topic. I think it's a great
1:37.2	podcast and I really enjoyed talking to Jason and I think you will as well. Before we do the flybox just a product that
1:47.2	that might you might be interested in that you might have missed. Orvus has had these for a long, long time, but they're called super magnifiers.
1:58.6	And they're a very high quality pair of, like half glasses except they're in 4X and 5X
2:07.5	magnification which is not something you can typically buy when you buy reading
2:12.1	glasses and you know even from an optical shop it's
2:16.6	difficult to get this high power and I use them both for fly tying and on the water because magnification is so important even if you've got perfect close up vision of threading a say a, a 7X tippet through a size 24 hook, or even sometimes a 5X through a size 16 hook,
2:40.5	can be difficult.
2:42.0	Or tying a blood difficult or tying a
2:43.0	tying a blood knot or tying a surgeon's knot and we all need a little bit of
2:47.1	close-up help.
2:48.6	And it's both on the river, on the water and in fly tying. So these are a great aid no matter how good your
2:57.6	vision is these are a great aid for getting close up on things both in the field and at the flight time device.
	...

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