So what do you think?

[Dryrod]

[font "Garamond"][#008000][size 4]When you think about it – why should stocked trout hit on a dry, nymph or a streamer? After all that is not what they are fed at the hatchery. However, I would think that after a few days in the river hunger would overcome them and they would eat anything in sight. To thrive in a hatchery, fish feed aggressively on the top of the water, where their food pellets are scattered. Perhaps that is why one catches [at least me] a lot of small fish [8 -10”] on a dry fly.[/size][/#008000][/font]
[font "Garamond"][#008000][size 4]In the wild, that sort of behavior will get a smolt eaten by a kingfisher. It wasn't until 1960, with the advent of pelletized feed made from fish meal that hatcheries had significant success in raising large numbers of fish to large fingerling size or even to the smolting stage, when the fish begin to adapt to salt water for their adult lives. Fish were not the only one that had to adapt to this changed food source. In Astoria (Oregon) the most common fish lure these days is fashioned to look like a tiny artificial food pellet (the Oregon Moist Pellet) rather than the traditional insect or egg. So what do you think?
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[Brook]

When you think about it, Dryrod, why should a wild trout hit on a dry, nympth or streamer?

I'm not being facitious.

Back when Selective Trout was first published, Friend Wife, who didn't fish at the time, was looking at the cover. She looked at the picture of a live mayfly. And at the picture of a traditional dry fly. She said (pointing at the natural) that's what trout eat? I said yes. And she said, pointing at the dry, and that's what you use to catch them on? Again, I ansered in the affirmative.

"Boy," she exclaimed. "Trout are stupid!"

That could be taken as the short answer. But, of course, there's more to it. Basically, trout are primitive creatures with a genetic imperative (i.e., instinct) to examine anything that might be food.

Ever watch the raceways in a hatchery? The fish there bite on little twigs, and bits of flotsom in the water, just as their wild cousins do in a stream.

If something isn't good to eat, they spit it out. If it is good, they eat it. And get imprinted with the idea that that sort of thing is food.

This happens incredibly quickly, too. Watch the so-called fishermen who follow the hatchery trucks. The fish haven't even learned, yet, that there is more water than they're used to. But those guys are hauling them out on worms, and corn, and doughballs, and even wet flies. Nothing that resembles pellets at all.

Why? Because the instinct to explore for food is strong, even in multi-generational hatchery fish.

Which is why, too, even wild fish will hit a pellet fly.

Whew! Been a long time since I delivered a lecture. Hope you weren't bored.

Brook
http://www.the-outdoor-press-advisor.com
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[Dryrod]

[center][font "Garamond"][#008000][size 4]Thanks Brook - all I was looking for was some dialogue as this forum has been kind of quiet lately.[/size][/#008000][/font]
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[flygoddess]

I can say on planters, but at the LODGE, we would periodically through out fish food to get the fish to the surface so that the clients could catch them on dries.
Sounds like cheating and it most definitely is, but when a person spends big bucks to catch BIG FISH, sometimes you have to go the extra mile.
I am talking the on land LAKES (there were 8 of them) and the summer months. Plus this is all catch and release, so we did what we thought necessary.
I don't agree with it, but it was my job.
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[Brook]

I dunno, FlyGoddess.

Is making multiple casts to simulate a hatch cheating? I don't see as it's any different. It's not like you were putting the food on a hook and pretending it was a fly.

It also raises a question about how selective trout really are. Sure, there are times where they get fixated on just one food type, particularly if it's abundent.

So how come, with all that "real" food they still hit an artificial dry fly? Not very selective of them at all.

Returning to Dryrod's original discussion. Years back, before we had electroshocking and other modern survey techniques, one way of counting fish was to dump a couple of pounds of ground up lights (cow lungs) at the head of a pool, and watch the trout feed on them.

There is no way those wild fish could have ever seen that before. Yet they'd happily feed on this windfall.

Again, it was a matter of trying something that might be food, and, in this case, discovering that it was.

Another example: When Golden Trout were first discovered, one of the favored baits for them was chocolate-covered cheeseballs. No kidding!

We're talking about wild fish in wilderness lakes who'd never seen a person before, let alone anything as outlandish as that. But they ate it with relish.

And, of course, we've all had the experience of fishing fast pocket water in nonfertile streams. The fish has little time to decide if that's really an insect you've just floated over him. So he errs on the side of calories, and hits it.

Brook
http://www.the-outdoor-sports-advisor.com
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[Scruffy_Fly]

Hey now Brook don't be tak'n pot shots at one of my basic techniques. Casting, recasting,recasting and re..... [crazy] over the same spot so that a fish thinks a hatch is happening.
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[Brook]

Wasn't taking shots at you, Scruffy. Merely making the point that I didn't think Flygoddess' chumming the lake was cheating, anymore than creating an artificial hatch was cheating.

Somebody still has to present the fly, and set the hook, and play the fish. Ultimately, that's what counts.


Brook
http://www.the-outdoor-sports-advisor.com
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[flygoddess]

This stems from growing up in Idaho, where people would through corn from cans to gather fish. I don't care for chumming. Reminds me of the old show "Bless The Beast And The Children". or Fish in a bucket
Now on the ocean where it is such a VAST body of water, I can understand it there...but still not sure I would do it.
But, the difference is, "I" go fishing. I don't go for food and it makes no difference if I don't catch anything.
A survival aspect, anything goes....but then you want to save the corn for a side dish LOL
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[Brook]

[indent]Well, sure. That's why I use a flyrod and a flintlock rifle.

For me it's the doing. Catching a fish just means I solved the problem. And anything I shoot for the table is just extra. Frosting on the cake, as it was.

But when you're guiding (which is what I understood your post to mean), you personal feelings have to be subsummed. What counts is pleasing the sport.

Most of them say they're only in it for the sport. But, as you well know, the bottom line is that they're there to catch fish. Your job is to do whatever it takes to assure that.

You ever read John Gierach's tale "Guiding and Being Guided?" I can relate. Boy, can I relate. Which is why I'm a great teacher, but a not so great guide; and avoid doing it whenever I can

Brook
http://www.the-outdoor-sports-advisor.com
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[Dryrod]

[font "Garamond"][#008000][size 4]Chumming with corn is practice all over this country. While I personally have never chummed, I just might do so to catch a carp or two at my local regional park.[/size][/#008000][/font]
[font "Garamond"][#008000][size 4]Chumming (the introduction of food to the water for the sake of attracting fish) is not legal in all states. So check your regulations before you start doing it. But feeding ducks is legal in all states as far as I know. I guess it is a matter of intent. Nonetheless, chumming is a terrific way to attract and trigger carp and other fish.[/size][/#008000][/font]
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[mojorizing]

What's the difference between chumming and doing the San Juan shuffle? Legal maybe, but highly unethical.
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[flygoddess]

Just a note on the CORN. It is illegal in Utah[]
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[windriver]

On the yellowstone it is called the "buffalo shuffle."

Windriver
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[flygoddess]

For the new comers, the San Juan shuffle is, walk in a river, kick up rocks and the river bottom, sending all the bugs and food, floating down the river. Then move down river to start fishing...chumming.
I don't know about the Buffalo Shuffle...is it the same thing?
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[Dryrod]

[center][font "Garamond"][#008000][size 4]Haven't you heard that song where it mentions Shuffling off to Buffalo?[/size][/#008000][/font]
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[Thudpucker]

The Idea of scruffing up a good fly sounded kinda outlandish till I tried it and found it worked.

Fish have a narrow filter on what is and aint.

A brand new Spratly wont catch wild or Hatthery Rainbow's. But one thats scruffed up, dirty and ratty looking will get em' pretty often.

There's another fly, a bi-visable, the real name is: "Renegade".

It only seems to work where a stream from the High Irrigation ditches runs into the sandy wide spots in the run-off stream.
So it's genetic profile matches somthing those fish are used to eating. What? I never found out.
But that fly never caught fish anywhere else I tried it.
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[windriver]

Yep. Same thing. The fisherman shuffles the rocks and gets the nymphs going in the seam then drops a nymph into the seam along with the real ones. You can stand on the popular stretches of the yellowstone and see this done all the time. It is chumming if you ask me.

Windriver
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[Scruffy_Fly]

fishing behind a person fishing up stream can be rewarding due to this effect. But it does make the guy up ahead nervous. The guy also wonders why this jerk is behind him and whether he is going to be hooked by the jerk?
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[Dryrod]

[font "Garamond"][#008000][size 4]I was taught to approach the water and enter it quietly. Kicking rock accidentally would likely spook any fish in the area.[/size][/#008000][/font]
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[flygoddess]

It probably will spook the general vicinity fish, but down stream the fish would think it is a bug fest.
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