Concealment

One of the biggest surprises on my return to the sport has been the 'real tree' pattern on just about everything. Now I'm a bit of a traditionalist and favour the militarys DPM pattern. On a recent trip to Willow Lakes we got around to discussing the pros and cons. Let me start by explaining how I believe fish in general behave. I dont believe they are inteligent enough to pick out our outline from the background but rather they respond to movement. A good friend told a story of hooking a huge barbel and played it for quite a long period, during this time he believes the fish didnt know it was hooked. The sudden end to the fight came when his accomplice moved his arm to point at the fish at close range, spooked it and instantly parted the line. They had been in view of the fish from the begining but the barbel responded not to thier outline but to the sudden movement.
Responding to movement is merely a reflex designed to avoid predetors whilst identifying an outline is a lot more sophisticated. There are things we can do to avoid this motion from being detected, we can stay low and definitely avoid being silouheted on the skyline, move slowly and wear clothing to break up our outline.
This is where camaflage comes into play. DPM (disruptive pattern material) is a good all round pattern which works well against many differnt backgrounds. Real tree patterns are amazing BUT only against bush and tree backgrounds, horses for courses I suppose but I do believe that DPM will give a better break up against a greater range of backgrounds.
A few weeks ago at Farlows Lake I manage to creep up on a pair of pike hard up against the bank, I stood over them for about ten minutes and the only thing to spook them was when I moved my arm to flick a boilie (I was just testing them!) in front of them. There was and maybe still is a matchman who I believe may have been called Jan Porter who dressed every time in red. He caught a huge number of fish and was extremely successfull without a single hint of dark clothing let alone DPM or real tree!
This is the direction our conversation took and we questioned the point of real tree or even DPM rod holdalls, bait buckets and luggage. These after all are items which spend most of their time in the grass not moving and if the fish are close enough for their concealment to be of importance then a million other things will have given the game away long before such as hands, face, rods, reels, bite alarms......
Finally the other main thing to spook the fish other than movement is sound, maybe even more so. I believe careless footfalls spook more fish than anything else. Bear in mind that a footstep can be 'heard' by fish through ground and water for tens of meters.
Next time you are on the bank think about your position, movement and noise. Its a good habit no matter what range you are fishing.