Knowledge and experience.

[daringduffer]

I start a new thread since we were far out in GlassJet:s "Natural design" from where I quote this:

...

In order to attain certain skills you need the methods and training which will give you them. The possession of those skills is essential in acquiring others. A long time ago now, but at one time, it used to surprise me that people are often very reluctant indeed to accept this. Some spend more time trying to avoid it, and looking for excuses, than they would if they simply went ahead and tried to learn properly. This also seems to be "just how it goes............."

Finally, you don't have to be the absolute master of something in order to enjoy it. If you enjoy your fishing, then that should really be enough. If you are dissatisfied, then by all means try to improve, but don't make that a "condition" of your enjoyment, or you will simply end up being frustrated, and lessen your enjoyment. If you do decide to improve, then you need to follow some sensible method of doing so, or that too will simply result in frustration.



Regards and tight lines!

Mike

I don't believe it is possible to enjoy fishing the fly more than I already do. I have to be dragged from the water. I have substantial experience of fish behaviour from breeding Tanganyika cichlids (mostly) in the seventies and eighties. One can learn a lot about different ways to take food, for instance, how they spook and a lot of other things. I believe this is of great use to me when I fish, even if there are lots of differences. I have a sense of confidence in my quest for success.

One thing I observed was that fish spook more easily when water quality is bad. They don't take food from the surface as freely as when the water quality is good. They also grab, spit, grab, spit several times before they accept it as food - even if it is kicking chironomids and such.

Another strange thing that occured was that a pair of "Uaru amphicantoides" (South American cichlid) only got spooked by strangers. They did not care if I, my wife or our closest friend were coming and going but if it was a stranger they vanished. Our dogs, biggun's, were also accepted, even if they were pretty wild. After much experimenting with water quality I succeded in breeding them too. When their fry have used up their egg sac they feed from the sides of the adults!

Once I had to remove a very aggressive male "Tropheus duboisi" which was impossible to catch. In the end I had to use a 0,12 mm tippet, size 18 hook and a chironomid.

Well, experience. My experience is that wild trout is a lot more difficult for me to catch than grayling. I guess that they require more stealth. I also guess that they must be in the water system. We tend to fish where there are more grayling and less trout.

dd

[daringduffer]

Yes, countless thing influence countless things - among them fish. Where I used to live I was feeding a shoal of ide, from time to time, with bread and dog food and various other things. They fed freely until the light came from south-west when they always stopped feeding but resumed when it came from west.

Once I tried for three hours to catch a grayling of about 15 cm. I decided not to fish for other fish until this one was caught. I tried numerous flies in numerous ways and in the end he/she was mine. My friends thought I was stupid, wasting time on a thing like that. To me, it is the achievement that counts, not the size of the fish.

I believe it is lack of casting skills, as well as lack of overall stealth, that makes it more difficult for me to catch sizeable trout. I agree that they are more easlily spooked. But I am improving and know what I have to improve. I always believe that there is fish in the water and that lack of skills is the reason if I don't catch. I know that this is not always true, but it gives me faith and contentment in what I try to do. My friend usually says "there are no fish here - let's try somewhere else".

One thing that has become more and more clear to me is that it is often not another fly that is the solution when the grayling refuse to take, but lengthening and degreasing the tippet. What I am referring to here is dry fly fishing but I believe the same thinking is reasonable in all fishing - presentation counts (most).

Well, just some thoughts...

dd

[willowhead]

Nice thread so far.....

[Otter]

There is no doubt in my mind that the three key areas to successful fly fishing are Knowledge, Experience and Essential Skills and that they very much go hand in hand. Its how we think about and how we develop these that defines how far and at what pace we progress. Equally it will be influenced by what we consider to be success, for some it is constantly setting goals and achieving them, for others it may be simply getting out fishing.

If we look at the type of fly fishing promoted on this forum it can stimulate you to fish patterns designed over a hundred years ago, or more modern flymphs. Each individual may be stimulated in various ways, the important thing is that we allow room for development but also allow for those that simply wan't to be part of something.

In all these things, even to the fishing itself you may start out with one desire but god knows where that journey will take you, it will all depend on what you seek, the influnces of the rivers you fish and the influences of others that you meet.

I have an un-quenchable thirst for improving my fishing and my knowledge that is probably obsessive, but a memory like a sieve makes it difficult at times, and often 3 steps forward, 2 steps back. Sometimes arbitrary things happen that causes certain things to click into place.

Whatever your makeup, if you have the desire you will achieve many of you goals and if you find the right people to help you it will be all the easier.

Whatever your choices, enjoy yourself.

[willowhead]

You guys are the best.....i love getting an insight to all your different but kindred ways of lookin' at the big picture.....ya'll represent the truest and most honest manifestation of why this age of communication is so important to the future of everything. Your leading by example in ways that i hope are appreciated by a much larger percentage of all peoples ASAP! You dig? Just keep it up.

[Otter]

I hope what I am about to attempt to say makes some sense.

As one grows in experience and knowledge and reflect backwards in time, what many will see is an angler that season to season jumped from one technique to another, one style to another , one preferential way of fishing to another. A bit like wine tasting, starting out we are not sure what good wine should taste like and try many varieties , taking advice from whatever quarter, books, magazines, other anglers, the internet. As the seasons progress, we find that we are more capable of catching trout , making better decisions on all aspects of our craft. We become more acutely aware of the what and the when in terms of successfully fooling a trout - knowledge and mostly experience allied with skills coming nicely to-gether.

What I have started to question is the "little tricks" one learns , little techniques that yield a few more trout, percieved wisdoms handed down over the generations. The big question here and its a real biggie, are many of these things "workarounds" , mere trickster illusions that convince you that you have become a good angler. Whilst you can catch more trout because you have more aces up your sleeve, but do you really know when these aces should be played. But greater than this were you to really understand the game would you need any aces. Then you come accross others that not alone have more cards up their sleeves, but they also know when to use them , they know the game intimately and rarely have to use trickery in the way many of us do.
They have learned the ways of their quarry and its quarry and are able to present their fly in a natural way at a time and in a place that casts no doubt in the eye of a trout - that, that is food !!!!!!

Trickery is all that most of us will ever achieve, wouldn't it be nice to go that one step furtheror die trying .....

[kanutripr]

I think I see what you are saying Otter. Round about my second full year of fly fishing I was standing in a stream watching little bits of leaves and other flotsam go by and started to wonder how does the fish know what is food and what isn't? I was fishing a pheasant tail nymph and how did it really look any different from bits of leaves going by. Well it was a flashback, was this enough? Maybe this bit of flashback was a trick as Otter described. I got to thinking about how to make a perfectly dull looking fly into a fish magnet and made a conscious decision to learn more.

I have found myself reading more and more about fish, how they react, how baitfish and insects behave. I make sure to listen to talks by entomologists, not just the casting instructors, when I visit any fly fishing conclaves or whatever you call them. Trying to actually understand what the fish views and how it chooses it's food is interesting and beneficial. I actually enjoy this and it has made me a much better fisherman.

We all incorporate "tricks" if you will when we are tying. Little things to try to make the fly appear more lifelike. Or is this knowledge? I don't know anymore. I just know that fly fishing and fly tying and learning as much about my quarry as possible has become an obsession for me. I think, considering our conversations here, there are a few others who feel the same way. I can't wait to meet some of yas!


Vicki

[daringduffer]

Otter,

Could you please give an example of one of these tricks so I can fully understand you? It almost sounds like cheating. Could it be fishing NZ style or the use of strike indicator you are referring to? Something of that kind?

I agree with you Vicki, that learning the ways of trout and their prey is most interesting. I still have difficulties in deciding what they are eating when different insects, or different stages of the same insect, are about. I believe that one quickens the learning process by sticking to one water, not buzzing around for a "better" stream someplace else.

dd

[William Anderson]

dd, I used to preface most of my posts with, "'I'm fairly new at this, so take any comment from me with that in mind," but now all I can say is "i've been at this almost 10 years, and the more I believe I know, the more I realize I don't know." It's like the target keeps changing, only it doesn't. Some may disagree, I hope, but I think the broad subject of trout fishing in cold water is largely ambiguous, and sometimes just unknowable. We're really just "doing the best we can", rather than feeling like masters. Some of you are masters, I'm sure, but I am always suspect of anyone who has...the answers.

Otter, I too am curious about what you mean by tricks. Do you mean as dd refers to "a cheat"? or is it something that is novel to you as you experience season after season, but has actually been a founded technique for many over years of experience? (and if you care to share them...send me a PM!) At this point I find my self, with my limited memory, thinking back to what some geezer said in passing years ago, that I took as just regular old man B.S., and finding a light come on and saying aha, that's what he meant. Or text that meant nothing without the experience described and seeing a thing play out.

I want to fish more water repeatedly, but I can't often fish the same stream more than once or twice a season. My location is really about 2 -5 hours from trout water in all directions, and so are my friends. So there is a real problem with collective knowledge specific to a condition. So I lean a lot on others experiences out of necessity. God knows I spend more time reading and tying than I get on the water, and that's a shame. But the hours that I spend knee deep in cold water season after season are interesting because I feel like I have a warehouse of information to draw from, mostly from you guys, and the knowledge and experience all meld into a kind of unconscience rhythm. More and more, I find that I wish I could remember what that old coot that I met sitting on a bench along the Letort was talking about. I was listening, but it didn't mean then what it does now. Now I could understand it...if I could only remember.

w

[Otter]

.......

Otter, I too am curious about what you mean by tricks. Do you mean as dd refers to "a cheat"? or is it something that is novel to you as you experience season after season, but has actually been a founded technique for many over years of experience?

w

William, good question, and preface this with "Otter thinking out loud and maybe out butt"

What I am really getting at is that quite often we have little techniques that we have learned from others or by our own invention that work quite well at times. How often do we really understand or even think about how our fly is really behaving when we use these techniques,and what element of the technique is responsible for the take.

Take for example bead heads ( probably a lazy example) , is it the bead that attracts, is it the diving motion from the weight, is it simply getting to the right depth, is it something else. Following on from this what alienates many bigger trout from taking bead heads, is it the bead, is it the fast diving motion etc.... Now add a buoyant indicator into the mix and you have added being able to swim the fly at a constant depth, what effect has that on our quarry, obviously it seems to fool some trout and others not at all.

What I think, I think ( so bear with me ), what I am getting at is that various techniques will on occasion for "a moment in time" (right place, right time, right behaviour) says food to a trout - these are the workarounds I was referring to. Maybe thats all there is too it and that increasing experience will enhance your ability you to get your fly into the "right place" at the "right time" using these techniques.

The right behaviour is another matter and thats the bit I believe the really excellent anglers have an angle on ( apart from stealth and a host of other attention to detail aspects that they so obviously have). I have a feeling (totally un-qualified), that many of commonly used techniques instill in the fly too many elements of wrong behaviour allied with just a few good behavioural aspects, and I believe that there may be a case to be argued that this can have a very strong influence on our catch, particularily our catch of older wiser trout. And this is why one angler can fish a piece of water and take a few trout, a more experienced angler will catch a few more and the anglerwhose flies are behaving more naturally for much of their drift will take many many more.

Hope this explains better what I "think" I am trying to say, and if you think I should be certified as a deluded lunatic please PM me ASAP