Paul Arden wrote:Can't always tell in advance which is which, tho' ,can you?
I tend to hit fast takes quickly and slow takes slowly (or longer delay). Not sure if it's necessarily spookiness, Gourami are always spooky and always eat slowly. Those tiny sip downs with trout have to be hit fast however. Especially if they have the resistance of a floating leader!
Well as you know I disagree with you on floating leaders! And in all situations. In times when the leader refuses to sink that's when we need to go very thin.
Having said that, the fact that you subscribe to a floating leader does make me think. I know you catch fish, so it must work! (Just not for me
)
The main reason I think the leader should be sunk is because in the film the light reflects around it. We've all seen the refusals on stillwaters, why should it be any different on moving water? Granted it is perhaps less important because the fish has less time to eat.
Incidentally I think the fish's brain only sees what it wants to see, otherwise we'd never catch them. The only fish that has really made me think differently has been Gourami - I've actually started to question myself whether they see the hook. But I still don't believe that!
Cheers, Paul
Oh I love disagreements!
Out of them cometh a kind of truth--or at least greater refinement of it...
Refusals on stillwaters is what leads many good anglers to reject my recommendation to float the tippet when fishing upstream on rivers: but it's an extrapolation from one circumstance to a totally different one.
Last season I caught 125 good fish on rivers on a floating tippet and I have put photos of all of them on my Facebook page in an album called "Good Fish on floating tippet 2015". Just about every one is over 17' or 2lbs and all were good fish for the river in question. Haven't counted the smaller ones but they're largely in my picture diary and catch returns--at least five times as many, over say 10". Didn't fish the floating fly on a river without a floating tippet....so the comparisons between using each are in the past and I didn't really keep good enough records of which fish were caught on which!
I successfully use tippets 1X heavier when floating them (provided they are long--4' plus; and loose) than I find I can use for a sunk nymph.
On Corrib, the good and the great anglers are using, when floating flies in the Caenis, 3lb BS tippet (necessarily sunk, degreased every cast) and taking half an hour to land a decent fish.I've been out there, doing it, three years in a row, It's the only way to get the podded-up, spooky-as-hell fish: but in a river you'd hook them, and land them in 5 minutes, on 5lb tippet. But then on a river they are having your fly carried down to them: decision time is more or less forced on them, whereas your stillwater fish can, and frequently does, swim round the fly looking at it, or is just as likely to have seen it sideways on in the first place.
Any way, my point is, the floating tippet works fine/better than sunk, on rivers. People who've tried it are sticking with it.
So there!
Neer neer ne neer neer!
Sucks to you Paul!
(look, I've always found it hard to handle criticism)
Interested to have your thoughts on this.
