Big Flies and Refusals

[mario66pens]

A few nights last week and this week, me and a few buddys have been fishing the GDs in several streams in the area (none of them named Penns.) It seems like were getting more "misses" than usual, say as in when we fish the sulphers.

Are these most likely just refusals? Or missed hook sets from large flies?

Drag? Pattern? Misidentification?

 

[dryflyguy]

That's typical when fishing larger flies - especially in very clear water.
A lot more bulk for them to inspect before they decide to eat it.

Also, most streams that have green drakes get pounded pretty well. And that makes the fish get very finicky.

 

[albatross]

The smaller fish are harder to hook because they cannot fit a size 8 in their mouth

 

[fishingn00b101]

I was having the same problem last week. It seemed like I was timing the fish right, they would go after it, and then I'd get a refusal. One of my friends told me it was because of drag, which makes a lot of sense.

Albatross has a good point though. This fish may have been too small to fit the whole GD in their mouth. Upon grabbing it, and most likely immediately realizing it was not a real GD, they spit out the fly.

 

[Chaz]

On Tuesday evening I got a bunch of refusals fishing over rising trout on Pine. They would come up and look right at the #8 coffin flies I presented, I have several patterns, then abruptly turn for the bottom. I did catch a few trout at the first spot, but not like the evening before.
My conclusion was the trout were taking something I wasn't seeing, there were 3 or 4 hatches coming off simultaneously. I just didn't get the right fly in front of the right fish.
Later on Tuesday evening we moved around and went looking for a big spinner flight and found it at the Grubb Hole, and it was fish on until well after dark.The last was the biggest of the trip a 16 inch bow.
I'll add there were brown drake at the same time, and I have no doubt that some of the trout were keyed on the BD's.
The small streams were dead during the day, I'm not used to that.

 

[JeffK]

One more option: sulphurs under the water. Last weekend I fished the E Branch of the Delaware and we all got some fish on coffin flies, but the guy who killed them fished a sulphur nymph on a 3 foot dropper beneath the dry. Not only numbers of fish, but he was getting the larger ones as well on the dropper.

Earlier in dun time there were brown and green drakes hatching sporadically under bluebird skies. I tried a green drake for an hour or two just because and got the fin. Then switched to a brown drake like I knew I should and got three in a short time. I generally find trout prefer the brown drake duns.

Last year I had trouble hooking fish on extended body coffin flies and then cut the extended bodies off and started hooking up. Now I tie with short tails and have better results.

 

[mario66pens]

Makes sense guys…the catskill style did seem to do better for me than the extended body.