Bone-rattling excitement coursing through your brain to your hands- is a feeling we all know very well. It's the moment you watched or felt your first strike. This is the main feeling that keeps us coming back for more. If catching fish, by any method, was a monotonous task then the fishing industry would only sell large throw nets and electrofishing gizmos. The elated feeling of connection is like crack. It's what drives us insane when we are skunked from a long day's trip and when we are snowed in.
Of all the senses we have, sight has to be the most crucial to our experience and survival. Watching a strike happen is vastly different than only feeling the strike. The hyper-sense of the line slightly tightening combined with the full HD video of what is happening through our eyes results in what I call the fisherman's orgasm. Even if it doesn't result in a full take, the single moment of feeling and watching the fish go after your fly is the most exciting part of it all. It doesn't matter what type of fish it is, you are the one who is hooked.
Hope is what we're left with next. Clinging to the end of the climax is our hope of fish on! As we try to calm down in .001 seconds to achieve hook up, our feeling of excitement is usually followed by a slightly disappointed miss. I equate this to taking a sip from a cup expecting the taste of Sprite only to be disappointed by bland, tasteless water. Ok, maybe there isn't a climax in the moment before the first sip of Sprite but you get the picture. This maddening feeling of fisherman's orgasm, followed by a disappointing shout of, "Oh! He missed it!" is an all too familiar experience for most us.
"Do trout really miss that often? Was this my mistake by not setting the hook at the right time? Why has this happened 6 times in a row?" Those are the questions that run through my mind after it happens; hopefully I'm not alone.
Let's address the first question. "Do fish, by their own mistake, truly miss a surface lure often?"
Part of my ego wants to say yes, they do. Sometimes I think how dumb the fish has to be to miss a snack it obviously wanted! However, fish have been here for ages. There are about 28,100 species of fishes known to science, they are divided into 4 classes, 59 orders, 490 families and 4,300 or so genera*. Fish have had thousands of years to deveolope, evolve, and adapt to their respective environments and so have their prey. Each species has its own tactics for catching its prey and can even change with location! For example, Great White Sharks expload to the surface in South Africa for seals while in the mid Atlantic Great Whites rarely surface-expload for their prey. Not only does each species have different tactics, but, even down to each environment and prey type, fish have their own tactics. Fish have had plently of time to adjust with each change that comes their way.
When humans began luring fish by artificial means it presented another problem to fish: don't get caught! Heavily fished areas are usually the most difficult areas to fish because the habitants have had to adjust to our angling methods. This indicates fish are more intelligent than I will give them credit for (especially a missed strike). I have watched different species of fish come up to the surface to inspect a leaf, soap, a cricket, a piece of jerkey, an artificial fly, and the list goes on! Not all resulted in the object being eaten. Fish are fickle, scared creatures just trying to survive. I've seen just as many strikes as I have inspections in my fishing life which also tells me: every village has idiots, and even the non-idiots succumb to instinct. Not to say that every time we catch a fish we are getting the village idiot, but that it takes true skill to consistently catch fish day-to-day and in different environments. We too, like the fish must be able to adapt to different species of fish, environments and conditions.
Misses from strikes can be a combination of things: intelligence of the fish, lack of intelligence, presentation, hook set, timing, slack in line, and presence of other predators just to name a few. Fish are more intelligent than we think and so are we (or at least can be). If you find yourself missing surface strikes again and again you might need to look broad spectrum at all the factors.
*Source: www.earthlife.net/fish/classification.html
What tweaks have been working for you?
Good article Adam!
ReplyDelete