If you work in a shop, you see "normal" human fishing behaviors......
People fishing out of a warm feeling about the fly that worked last time.
Even if the last time was 10 years ago.
I used to fish early on with a Royal Humpy......I didn't know any better.
But since I learned bugs are always changing, and that fish appreciate the effort you put into choosing your fly, do you even try to match the hatch?
So, are you an emotional or a logical fisher?
From my time on the water, I would say 70% of the fishers never learn the bugs at all........just fish their "lucky" fly.
Jim
You are probably right. I think it is because most fly fishers fish freestone streams and rivers that do not often have a prolific enough hatch for the fish to become selective "most of the time". I bet if they did, then the fishers would become more "logical" meaning they would have a reason to figure out what the fish are taking and use a matching fly.
I understand what you mean by your post, but I need to point out that, even when we might think a fly fisher is not being logical, eg putting on "the fly that worked last time", that in itself is logical; because it is based on experience and not a random choice.
Here's the thing. Norm Albinson, a fly fishing instructor at the University of Utah rightly points out that there are 5 main decisions that we make every time we fly fish. Rarely are these decisions random. In fact they form the basis of a logical systematic method, and we HAVE TO MAKE these choices every time we fish. We can be random, but I don't believe they are. If they were truly random, we would sometimes fish a hopper pattern in the winter. So we
subconsciously or consciously must choose what to do.
If we really
think about these decisions; they can form the basis for a systematic method. Below is part of a post I have made before.
"According to Norm Albiston of Utah, there are actually 5 major choices you have when fly fishing. They are the (A) location you fish, (B) the time of day you fish, (C) the water column you fish, (D) the fly(ies) you use, (E) the action you impart. Yet we almost always ask only about one of the five - (D) fly choice. Realistically, all 5 choices determine whether you will catch fish.
Realize also that choices (A-C) will determine (D)- the choice of flies, and (D) determines (E). I find that a systematic method helps me to become a better fly fisherman and to analyze what is going on. Always try to understand, what you are doing and why you are doing it, based on the five choices.
Here is the method I have come up when I fish a river for the first time. Break down a large river into small sections. The water type will generally determine the aquatic organisms.
You are reading the water, but you should by extension be reading the food. Riffles for example will generally have clinging mayflies and cased caddis, slower sections may have burrowing mayflies and so on. I turn over rocks and pull up some aquatic vegetation to confirm what lives underwater, and I shake a few bushes to see if there has been a hatch recently.
Based on (A) water type and what I have found when I looked at rocks and bushes, and (B) the time of day, I'll choose (C) the water column I'm going to fish. This determines (D) fly choice and that determines (E), how I am going to fish it. If there is a hatch going on, all 5 choices are determined when you decide to fish the hatch with a dry.
During non hatch periods, it is not so simple. During non hatch periods I still may fish the dry especially if the hatch that is occuring has just past. It is not so simple if you decide to fish the nymph. Then you need to decide what fly and where to fish it.
I will almost always put on two flies when fishing with a nymph. The reason is that I can use two entirely different flies, like a mayfly and a caddis pattern,
OR I can use two different sizes of the the same pattern,
OR I can use the same pattern in different colors (and also vary the size),
OR I can use a nymph and an emerger pattern of the same natural.
Fishing two flies also allows me to fish
two different water columns, essentially fishing to two different holding areas with the spread of the flies determining the spread of the water columns.
I will generally fish the riffles. Why? Because riffles are a prime lie. They hide sound so that I can get closer to the holding fish. Also the rougher water tosses naturals around and the fish have a harder time detecting unnatural drag.
By fishing two flies in the riffles, I let the fish tell me what flies to use and when to change flies. For example, if I know that a specific mayfly hatch is going to come off like BWO's and I'm fishing well before the hatch I'll put on a PT nymph of the appropriate size and maybe a caddis larva pattern that is also present in the riffles. When the BWO nymphs start to emerge and get tossed around in the riffles, the fish will begin to hit the pt nymph. Then I remove the caddis larva and put on a BWO emerger. As the hatch progresses and they stop hitting the nymph, I'll take off the nymph and rerig to fish a BWO dry with a emerger dropper. When the fish stop hitting the emerger, I'll just fish the dry.
This is a method that I call systematic nymphing or hatch progression fishing. It is a method that allows the fish to tell you when to change flies. But to do that you have to allow the fish to choose between two possibilities.
Realize also that feeding preference is a population based phenomena. That is, not all fish will be feeding on the same food item or change feeding preference at the same time. What we are doing is tracking what the population of fish are doing where you are fishing. Your friend that is 50 ft away could be in another micro environment and experience something different.
One last tip - in my experience, the first question that one should ask a successful fisher is
not what fly they are using, but what water layer are they fishing and how they are fishing it. I think this is the one important decision that is most often ignored. In my experience, in
non-hatch periods during opportunistic feeding, a fish will take almost any fly that looks like food what is presented at the right level with the right action.
On the San Juan River where almost all the fish are feeding all the time, the best tip I ever received was to change the weight rather than change the fly. Peggy Harrell is a guide on the San Juan and she is the best female fly fisher I have ever met and one of the best fly fishers I have ever fished with. I have seen her purposely put on the "wrong" fly, but take fish with it
because she was fishing it at the right level with the right action."
