Pressured water trout

[Eccles]

I have another of those rather general, arm-wavy sort of questions I need some opinions on.

When I asked a couple of weeks ago about whether your thought some trout species were easier to catch than others some of you made the point that you thought that the difference between trout from heavily pressured water and trout from un-pressured water was larger than any putative difference in ease of capture between species.

I wonder if the thought that pressured waters make trout harder to catch is a general consensus on the forum and if so what are you basing your view on. I mean if you think this the case you're probably basing it on catching fewer fish in pressured waters or having to work harder or take longer to catch the same number of fish.

But I'm even more interested in why you think that should be the case and in what your observations have been. Do the pressured trout reject flies more often, take a longer time to inspect your flies, are more difficult to hook or play or land, are they more spooky? And also what do you feel you have to change from fishing an un-pressured water to fishing a pressured water? Do you have to use longer leaders, finer tippets, smaller flies?

Of course if you don't think they harder to catch that would be good to hear too.

I realise that these kind of questions can be a bit frustrating to answer as there are numerous variables involved but I'd be grateful for any opinions and observations you guys have.

Thanks
Eccles

 

[Letort]

In my opinion and experience, fish that have flies thrown at them 12 hours a day, 7 days a week are harder to hook up with than fish that are much less pressured.

I have seen a fish on the Breeches swat a fly with its tail to see if it is real. Does not mean the fish cannot be caught, because of course they have to eat. But, yes, longer and finer tippets, smaller flies, etc., tend to be used more. I usually have the most success in these areas during some type of hatch.

These fish tend to laugh at a black wooly bugger or #12 BH Hare's Ear, whereas a less pressured fish will often hammer it.

 

[pafisherman]

I agree with Letort. Even with a hatch that lasts a period of time..like the Caddis & say trico's. As you get later in the hatch cycle they tend to really spend time looking at the fly before taking. For example by the time you get to say late Aug Sept. I am often using a size 26 Trico on 7x - 8x tippet to fool the trout in the YB.

Bill A

 

[geebee]

not harder to catch if your approach and presentation is good.

i've fished a very heavily fished tailwater where trout would sit in a foot of water and watch you cast into a run or pool for their brethren.

in the same stream further up, trout would 'bug' you by following you to pick up food disturbed by your wading.

even pressured fish have to feed. if the fly is the right size and the drift is good - in both speed and increasing altitude, they'll take it.

i guess that could be described as difficult, but it wasn't - just repetitive.

 

[dubthethorax]

My experience is that they'll take a fly just as often, as long as it's THE RIGHT PATTERN. Realism and tiny details will make or break your day on certain streams. Some thread, wire, and a ball of dubbing might not cut it for pressured fish.

I also find that fish that are more pressured are also way less likely to spook which in some cases makes them easier to catch.

 

[Eccles]

Letort,
That's an interesting observation. Finding that pressured trout are more difficult to hook is one of the things I thought I had noticed. I wonder if anyone else has found that to be the case.

 

[Eccles]

pafisherman
Do you mean you are having to use imitations that are smaller than the natural? Or were you getting away with using bigger than the naturals earlier in the season?

 

[Eccles]

geebee and dubthethorax
Yes, I think it makes sense for pressured fish to be less spooky because they don't associate the fisherman with being caught and so (have to) get used to having fishermen around.

As for increasingly realism it does get a bit tricky deciding whether they haven't taken your fly because it doesn't match what they are feeding on or they haven't taken your fly because they associate it with danger.

 

[Chaz]

I don't think that trout in pressured streams are any tougher to catch, but they see so many flies that they become selective and tend to rise only when there is a hatch occurring. They will always be rising to a specific stage of the fly, that's the key to catching. And it's always size and color.

 

[geebee]

Chaz wrote:
I don't think that trout in pressured streams are any tougher to catch, but they see so many flies that they become selective and tend to rise only when there is a hatch occurring.

or they become singleminded as Bob Wyatt would say - "does this look like what i'm eating" ?

I disagree about the details though (sorry dub) as 99% of my tailwater trout were taken on simple serendipty, hotspot or scud thread nymphs.

apart from a tiny tuft of white antron on the serendipty, no rib, no flash, no thorax , no BH. just thread and Sally Hansen.

more important was the size, and action - no micro drag and rising at just the right point.

 

[PennKev]

dubthethorax wrote:
My experience is that they'll take a fly just as often, as long as it's THE RIGHT PATTERN. Realism and tiny details will make or break your day on certain streams. Some thread, wire, and a ball of dubbing might not cut it for pressured fish.

The right pattern and a more realistic one are not the same. For instance Walt's worm and Al's rat are great flies on Spring creek. Neither are more than a couple material wound on a hook. They are indeed THE RIGHT PATTERN often enough. This has been my experience statewide. Size, color, general shape, and, most of all, presentation trump realism every time.

 

[Eccles]

Chaz wrote:
I don't think that trout in pressured streams are any tougher to catch, but they see so many flies that they become selective and tend to rise only when there is a hatch occurring. They will always be rising to a specific stage of the fly, that's the key to catching. And it's always size and color.

OK, but doesn't becoming more selective and changing their feeding behaviour to rise only when there is a hatch imply that they have become harder to catch. Not by learning about our flies maybe, but by forcing you to fish only when there is a hatch and with the specific stage of fly.

 

[Eccles]

PennKev wrote:

dubthethorax wrote:
My experience is that they'll take a fly just as often, as long as it's THE RIGHT PATTERN. Realism and tiny details will make or break your day on certain streams. Some thread, wire, and a ball of dubbing might not cut it for pressured fish.

The right pattern and a more realistic one are not the same. For instance Walt's worm and Al's rat are great flies on Spring creek. Neither are more than a couple material wound on a hook. They are indeed THE RIGHT PATTERN often enough. This has been my experience statewide. Size, color, general shape, and, most of all, presentation trump realism every time.

PennKev
So does that mean you don't think there is a difference between pressured and un-pressured streams in terms of how easy trout are to catch? Or does your presentation have to get better on a stream like Spring Creek than elsewhere?

 

[JackM]

Read only the OP, but my view is that it is not relative pressure that is most important, but relative fertility. Desperate trout will do desperate things.

 

[Eccles]

I realise that any discussion of this kind sometimes gets waylaid into the realist vs presentation debate. It's always a fun debate no doubt but my initial question is simply whether you think pressured stream trout are harder to catch and if so why.

The interesting thing about the presentation argument I rarely see debated is why should your presentation have to get better if the trout aren't learning something about flies, or tippets, or some other aspect they can use to discriminate between real and not. Doesn't presentation have to get better on hard fished waters to eliminate whatever it is that experienced fish are keying on? Might be the fly as is commonly assumed but it might be tippet glare, micro drag or the like. Trout still has to learn about those as well as (or instead of) how many legs a fly has.

 

[PennKev]

Eccles wrote:

PennKev
So does that mean you don't think there is a difference between pressured and un-pressured streams in terms of how easy trout are to catch?

Yes, pressured trout are usually less likely to fall for a bad presentation or the wrong presentation.

Or does your presentation have to get better on a stream like Spring Creek than elsewhere?

I don't know if better is the best word for it, but yes in general it does. Pressured fish tend to be less tolerant of poor presentation* and will give you fewer chances to get it right before shutting down. Spring creek is not the best example or me, because personally, I find it to be an easy stream to catch fish on due to their extreme abundance there. I was using it as an example to demonstrate how simple flies still work well on pressured streams. Personally, I find Fishing Creek to be much, much tougher. But then again I have much, much less experience there. By the way, simple flies still work well there also. The same goes for Penns, LJR, and many others.


*Presentation in this case covers a wide array of factors. Drag, casting, lining fish, tippet/leader diameter and length, etc. are all factors.

 

[shortrod2]

PennKev wrote:
The right pattern and a more realistic one are not the same. For instance Walt's worm and Al's rat are great flies on Spring creek. Neither are more than a couple material wound on a hook.

I agree with PennKev and GeeBee. I even have a theory that explains it...

I propose that trout do not enjoy being caught and would rather avoid it if they can.

Usually, we think about designing a fly to have attributes that will trigger something in a trout's vision that will convince it that our fly is food. Call it a positive trigger.

When trout are caught and released, they are being conditioned. I believe that, for pressured fish, a fly can have a negative trigger. This same attribute in a non-pressured stream would be a positive trigger.

Simple flies like the Walt's Worm remove the potential negative attributes and can be accepted as food more often on pressured streams.

Reasonable?

 

[JeffK]

Lots of questions here, and I don't think anyone has all the answers.

I think the conditioning does occur, but I'm not sure there are positive and negative triggers. A fish has an awful tiny brain and can't do much processing. I think the triggers are food, not food, and danger. BTW, I snorkel a lot in trout streams and it is always amazing how much stuff is floating downstream. Fish need to identify food from junk if they are to survive. But even then, trout take cigarette butts, sticks, bits of weed, et. now and again. I think that if a fish is stung by a fly it may "learn" that whatever trigger it was using is non food - but then it may not. Sometimes even in pressured water you can catch a fish more than once on the same fly. However, the fish in pressured water are more likely to get conditioned to see some flies as not food. Same with being spooked. At some places if the fish spooked every time a person in waders showed up they would starve to death. I also think that whatever the trigger is it must be simple, so very simple flies with the right trigger can be deadly. You don't have to go crazy with detail, that we can identify, but the trout may not.

Good thing about fly fishing is that the answer is never clear and gives us lots to play with.

 

[geebee]

Eccles wrote:
I realise that any discussion of this kind sometimes gets waylaid into the realist vs presentation debate. It's always a fun debate no doubt but my initial question is simply whether you think pressured stream trout are harder to catch and if so why.

my simple answer to that then is no. they are the same.

but like most generalisations it doesn't really say much unless you figure in other factors.

the only thing we do know for certain is the biological characteristics of trout - that without a cerebral cortex they do not possess the hard wiring to be able to rationalise.

that produces two truths imho :

1) trout make decisions based on instinct or short term memory - food/not food, danger/not danger, too hot/too cold etc etc

2) they look for positive triggers, not negative triggers (otherwise they'd notice the great big hook...) which are basic (cartoonish) in nature - size, shape, position, movement.

anything else is going to take you back to presentation versus realism/attractors imho.

and btw to prove his point Frank Sawyer used to catch 'selective" "pressured" wild chalkstream trout on bare hooks using the induced take method on The Avon.

 

[Eccles]

geebee
Ok, but I think the lack of cerebral cortex is a red herring. I think it is more whether aversion learning, a form of classic conditioning, goes on. And since pretty much all animals can do this, from us big-brained (and neocortex heavy) humans to tiny brained mosquitoes (they learn to avoid landing in places that gives them small electric shocks by remembering specific cues) the cortex issue doesn't apply. It simply requires an experience the trout would rather avoid, that it happens consistently enough to be learnt and then reinforced occasionally to help keep the memory.

In this context I'll add an example. Carp are becoming a popular fly fishing target here but it's a pretty recent development. The carp fishing scene in the UK on the other hand is huge (not fly fishing it has to be said but bear with me) and has been for the last forty years or so. Very quickly after people began to take carp seriously (and boy do some take them seriously) an arms race developed between the fish's ability to learn and the fishers ability to develop new baits and rigs. It is fair to say that now the whole sport is driven by the carp's ability to learn about baits and rigs. All the development, all the arcane baits that are made and the rigs put together, are a response to the fish not only learning to avoid the bait but also learning to only eat the bait that doesn't have a hook in it (they test all the baits and reject the ones with a hook). Carp don't have a cerebral cortex either.

Knowing that carp 'test' a bait (bass too as it happens) is why I found Letorts comment (#3) about worse hook-up rates on pressured streams interesting. I have very different hook-up rates between waters like Spring Creek (where, on the dry fly at least, it is lamentable) and less heavily fished streams or streams with stockies (where it is good) and have long wondered if the fish are testing the fly on the pressured streams. If the learning task is difficult, they know they might be in for a bad ride but can't distinguish between real and not, but they have to eat anyway as many of you have pointed out - would they act like carp and test the fly to minimise the chance of being hooked?

As for the induced take. I'm a big fan of Sawyer but I think the induced take is like slamming a streamer down close to a trout and forcing a flight/fight response on them. The induced take prompts a knee jerk reaction and the technique sidesteps issues of learning and all the rest. Get it right and the fish can't help it - just like us in different contexts. Fantastic method though - wish I had the skill to do it consistently.