How smart are trout?

[fisher4life]

As i read more and more about fly fishing and the differend flies "needed" i keep wondering how smart fish really are? There are people that go to extremes and have suitcases of flies and some have a small box. Do you really think a trout cares about all the different hues and shades? is it really neceasary to perfectly match the colour trout feed on? How far do you take matching the hatch? Fish have a brain the size of a pea so how do people give them so much credit. i'm just wondering you guys think about this.


fisher4life

[professori]

Trout aren't particularly smart. That said, they are extremely well adapted to do what they must to feed themselves. They perceive colour extremely well, they recognize food sources, and they do have a memory which aqllows them to avoid potential dangers, be they animal or human. The detail one must, on occassion, attend to in matching the hatch is actually caused by the lack of intelligence in trout. When there is a hatch of #14 olive chironomids and the trout are keyed heavily on them, they will ignore other food sources (either imitation or real) floating right past their nose. It is in those circumstances that one must adapt one's presentation to something the trout will accept at that moment. If trout were smarter, I would be a better fisherman.

[featherfisher]

I agree with professori. I think that they run on instinct. They probably don't have much in the way of a thought pattern. They just swim around doing what is instinctive to them, and what they eat at different times depends on these instincts.

[Stone]

Professori explained it well...those are my thoughts as well. I would imagine a heavily stocked lake would also be different. These types of lakes, since they are stocked with hatchery pelletheads so often and so heavily, are more easily fished with attractor or streamer patterns and one may not necessarily have to match the hatch. That's just a guess from what I've experienced though...and may not be necessarily be true.

[featherfisher]

I agree totaly Stone, in a heavily stocked lake I can troll around all day with my green wooley bugger and do just as well, if not better than anyone else whos trying to match the hatch. In a more natural lake that just doesn't seem to work as well.