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Show By TJ KxSmj Just what does a trout see? The easiest way to explain that is by comparing his eye with a man's. The human eye has sensitive elements of two kinds; rods and cones. The cones seem ' chiefly concerned with seeing an object clearly in a good light. The rods, most abundant at the sides, give only a vague image but they are very sensitive to movement and to light. You may know the trick of looking in a very dim light far to one side of an object; this throws its image on the rods which see it well enough for identification, when direct vision (with cones) would not see it at all. The retina of a fish's eye consists con-sists almost entirely of rods; also, there is behind it a reflecting membrane that helps it see still better in a dim light. Since he has mainly rod-vision he can see something almost at right angles to his pupil about as well as if it were directly in front. He is very sensitive to movement in a wide range; and he can see in dim light. Too, because of the laws of refraction, re-fraction, the more overhead a man is the more he and his movements are magnified; the closer he is to the surface the less a trout can see him and the smaller he appears. So Jason Jucas, our favorite angling authority, says all this means that in stalking trout in the open you should crouch as low as possible, sometimes even to the extent of crawling up and casting while lying on your side. Where creeping up is impractical imprac-tical try proceeding very slowly directly toward the trout, avoiding avoid-ing side movements when possible. possi-ble. Then the vague image that he sees is getting larger so gradually grad-ually that he may not notice it. When you are close, a long frozen froz-en pause may lull any suspicious trout that you're not a bush mov-ing mov-ing slightly in the wind. It is best to cast with wrist movement only, the hands directly di-rectly between you and the fish, so as not to show arm movement against the sky. A cagey trout might overlook the slender, waving wav-ing rod. |