Pressured water trout

Speaking from a dry fly point of view, I know that fish definitely get wise to heavy fishing pressure. And it's not just a presentation thing either. After they've been hooked several times on dry flies, I think they decide that they don't want to do go there anymore, and start feeding more subsurface. I've seen this happen over and over. And you can tell by the rise forms. Instead of a nice delicately sip on the surface, they start to make very splashy rises. And it becomes quite tough to take them on any floating pattern.

An it's not species specific either. Browns are generally regarded as being the smartest trout, with brookies being rather dumb. However, I've come across some brook trout that were very selective too.
Cutthroats also have a bit of a reputations for being rather dumb. But I once fished a stream in wyoming called the tongue river. It has a highly pressured catch and release area that's just full of cuts. And they were very challenging to catch.

 
Fish do get wise to heavy pressure.

That said, there are also differences in stream fertility, flow rates, etc. which have similar effects. And as was mentioned before, probably some effect of species. There are a lot of variables.

In general "easy" fish are less picky about what they're eating, will travel further for a fly, are generally always willing to eat, and will take it more aggressively and hold on longer. "Hard" fish will be ultra picky about what, and when they eat, inspect the fly closely when they do eat and reject it if they catch any sign of unnatural shape or drag, and when they do take, they'll "mouth" it and let go quickly, lowering your hooking rate. Heck, on nymphs, you often don't even detect the take.

By that definition, the hardest fish are brown trout in highly fertile streams which are slow with glassy surfaces. The easiest fish are brook trout in high mountain infertile streams with faster current and broken surfaces.

Counter to this trend is "spookability". The pressured fish in fertile environments will generally react less severely to a light spooking, and return to feeding more quickly afterwards. Often they don't even scoot, but just develop lockjaw for a few minutes, or sulk away a bit. The less pressured fish in less fertile waters scoot like darts when spooked, seem to completely disappear, and may remain difficult to catch for a matter of days or even a week. Add to that that the infertile streams tend to be smaller and brushier, which forces you to get closer, and combine that with typically clearer water. There is still some challenge, it's just of a very different nature.
 
Pcray: how are the Crap-throats of Valley forge? Does you need a pooper scooper?
 
Haven't been out there in the last couple of weeks, sorry.

And when I do go out that way I rarely make it down as far as the crap.
 
A friend of mine informed me that he was fishing the schoolkill last week with his 2 daughter's close to Filthadelphia. I cautioned him on it. He was unaware of what had happened in Valley Forge.
 
. 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.
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or driven by the anglers attempts to catch more and bigger fish in small ponds where the fish largely live off man made bait ?

there are still many many old school carp anglers like Chris Yates and Bob James and millions of others (literally) who do it the old way - natural bait, line, float....which is more difficult than the tent, four rods, bite alarms, hair rigs, ground bait, bait feeders, remote controlled boats (yes really) and the latest wonder bait.

i do have friends that now fish those highly pressured ponds and catch large numbers of carp on nymphs, crayfish and mulberry seed flies.

the millions they spend on carp bait and technology is cos people are lazy - its like wanting the latest bass lure rather than learning how to fish.

the carp in those ponds have just learnt that boilies are danger, not that they are being fished for - no different to trout.

present natural bait to them properly and they are still suckers. literally.

you might like this link :

http://fishermansparadise.co.uk/carp-methods/

note the comment about bread, and further down on flyfishing with surface seed flies.

skill & stealth vs dozing on cot....

cheers

Mark.
 
Mark (geebee)

Yea I agree with what you say (Yates book 'Casting at the Sun' is one of my most treasured and his style of fishing is very much after my own heart, one I grew up with, porcupine quill floats, cane, old farm ponds etc.) though I wouldn't want to comment on whether one is lazy behaviour or not.

I think what you do say just helps illustrate the difference between pressured fish and not. Of course you can get off the band wagon of boilies and bolt rigs and sneak around with natural baits or flies and catch fish that haven't been pressured in that way - they have no reason to suspect a freelined lobworm, a mulberry seed fly or bread if it hasn't been used recently. That might be like fishing outside the big hatches. Or you can use boilies and various rigs and because of the frequency this stuff is used the carp will learn about the baits and, in a very sophisticated way (for a fish) try and work out which one has a hook and which one doesn't. I'm not saying at all that they can't be caught but simply that under the pressure of the bivvies and bedchair brigade, they show remarkable learnt avoidance behaviour.

The analogy between carp and trout might be that trout want to feed on big mayfly hatches (like a bed of boilies it is a large abundant source of food to good to pass up) but if they have been caught while feeding on mayflies they come to associate this fly with danger. I mean the natural fly that is. I'm not persuaded that they can discriminate between an artificial and real given the variation between our patterns let alone the variation between our tying of the same pattern. It might be broader than that though - it might be that after a couple of captures they associate all surface flies with potential danger. They want the food but start to get a bit 'neurotic' about eating it. pcray1231's point about trout feeding more subsurface is well made as is the fact that in the face of having to take risks they somehow learn to take a fly in a way that minimises hook ups. If any of that is true it's very cool behaviour driven entirely by us anglers.

aye
Eccles
 
It all comes down to size color and pattern, not necessarily in that order. Sometimes pattern trumps the other 2, sometimes it's the others.
 
Quite often you need to be better then the other fishermen on heavy pressured stocked water. With wild trout ( non pressured) you need to be a good fishermen. Example Catch and release Yellowbreeches and catch and release Letort.
 
If anyone wants to get some good experience with heavily pressured, selective trout - I recommend that you spend some time matching hatches on the Delaware River. Stream bred browns and rainbows - they're both equally tough to catch.
 
Eccles wrote:

I think what you do say just helps illustrate the difference between pressured fish and not. Of course you can get off the band wagon of boilies and bolt rigs and sneak around with natural baits or flies and catch fish that haven't been pressured in that way - they have no reason to suspect a freelined lobworm, a mulberry seed fly or bread if it hasn't been used recently. That might be like fishing outside the big hatches. Or you can use boilies and various rigs and because of the frequency this stuff is used the carp will learn about the baits and, in a very sophisticated way (for a fish) try and work out which one has a hook and which one doesn't. I'm not saying at all that they can't be caught but simply that under the pressure of the bivvies and bedchair brigade, they show remarkable learnt avoidance behaviour.
Eccles
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Boilies, bolt rigs, lobworm, mulberry seed fly, bivvies, bedchair brigade.

I'm willing to admit that I don't know what any of those mean.
 
troutbert wrote:



Boilies, bolt rigs, lobworm, mulberry seed fly, bivvies, bedchair brigade.

I'm willing to admit that I don't know what any of those mean.
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lol. you're probably better off not knowing.

eccles makes some good points.

we'll never know why the hook is not a negative trigger though.

imho matching the hatch or trying to seems to make it harder for yourself - i like the Gierach approach - match the size with an adams and find the taking fish.

i understand that it must give people great satisfaction to solve the riddle successfully but my self i don't think its necessary to catch fish.

I must try the delaware this summer
 
Did I miss any reference to drag, and most germane to pressured trouts, microdrag? I'm referring in particular to dry fly ffishing. I like to observe how other anglers conduct their presentations, and it's amazing to me how most anglers seem to be unaware how much drag they induce. The truism that 10% of anglers catch 90% of the trouts, and with dry flies on pressured water, the ration might be 5/95 or even 1/99. Just because there's no wake doesn't mean there isn't considerable microdrag.

There are rocks on the Lil Lehi and Beaverkill where I can look deep into the pool and see those pressured trouts looking up at flies cast from across the way. They will speed up their finning rate until the microdrag sets in, and often not even bother to move up in the water column as they redirect their attention to the next interesting item coming down the flow.

Presentation trumps fly size, silhouette and specific pattern. But maybe that's also why skittering caddis hatches are so much more productive for most.
 
lestrout wrote:
Did I miss any reference to drag, and most germane to pressured trouts, microdrag? I'm referring in particular to dry fly ffishing. I like to observe how other anglers conduct their presentations, and it's amazing to me how most anglers seem to be unaware how much drag they induce. The truism that 10% of anglers catch 90% of the trouts, and with dry flies on pressured water, the ration might be 5/95 or even 1/99. Just because there's no wake doesn't mean there isn't considerable microdrag.

There are rocks on the Lil Lehi and Beaverkill where I can look deep into the pool and see those pressured trouts looking up at flies cast from across the way. They will speed up their finning rate until the microdrag sets in, and often not even bother to move up in the water column as they redirect their attention to the next interesting item coming down the flow.

Presentation trumps fly size, silhouette and specific pattern. But maybe that's also why skittering caddis hatches are so much more productive for most.
Click to expand...

Les is the 1

I would bet on him anytime, if someone is to have a shot to catch a really tough fish and/or a fish in a really tough lie fishing dry flies.
 
Les, micro drag I think is the separator on dry flies.

It fits in with the food / not food decision I think.

We all know that big dries on fast water take all salmonids - I think due to the impossibility of the fish seeing micro drag and the fish having to make a split second decision.

It's a bit like dry fly fishing on lakes in strong winds or light rain- the confused water hides a multiple of sins.

To be able to watch fish react to other people's casts is a fascinating thing I think - the articles on NZ creeks and Wyotts book lead me to think that fish don't often even see the fly.

 
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