Smart trout?

[KeviR]

On the Little Lehigh last Dec 31 I saw a behavior that I had never seen before. The pool I was fishing was situated so that I could see into the tail of the pool quite clearly. As I fished out one cast, I saw a good sized trout drifting downstream into the tail of the pool while flaring its gills and regurgitating as it drifted. It occurred to me too late that it probably had my fly in its mouth and was trying to eject it. I lifted to set the hook but was too late.
I could believe that this is a learned behavior. If the fish holds in position and tries to eject the fly, the angler sees the hesitation and sets the hook, etc. If the fish drops downstream while ejecting the fly, it gives them extra time to eject it before hook set. It worked for the fish in that case - I was tight-lining and never saw the hesitation if there was one.
Do you think in a pressured stream like the LL (heritage stretch) that trout could learn this behavior? This was a good sized fish, maybe 16 inches or so, so he might have had a bunch of encounters to learn this technique.

 

[dudemanspecial]

Good question.

I think its quite common for an actively feeding fish to move out of its holding spot to take the fly (or food), then drift back to its holding spot without hesitation, especially when rising for the fly. You said you were tightlining, so I assume you were nymphing. Was your fly near the bottom or higher up in the water column?

I really try not to give the fish more credit than they deserve, they have a brain the size of a pea.....but anything is possible I suppose if it's been hooked enough times.

 

[HopBack]

Fish are always sampling what they think might be food in the water column. They spit non food items out all the time. This is not really unusual and why it’s really important to set the hook at the movement of the indicator or tick in the mono if you are tight line nymphing.

 

[ryansheehan]

There was a great video of a guy tight lining with an underwater camera but I cannot find it. I was amazed at how many times the eat went undetected. Here's a different video I found that gives you the idea. You can see the trout move forward to eat and slide back as it's spitting. I think it's more of a reposition than anything else.

Here

 

[dc410]

Trout will practically mouth anything that floats past them. They instinctively will spit out anything that doesn’t feel right. I really don’t feel that they are smart enough to drift back into the current to give themselves an extra second to bust the “jack wagon” that happens to be holding on to the other end of the 9’ lightning rod trying to to stick them. I think it is totally just instinctive.

Carp on the other hand I feel are much smarter than your average trout because they will simply refuse to eat the fly if they had a bad experience with it in the past couple days … or weeks … or months. Have some bowfishermen fling some arrows at them and it adds a whole brand new dimension to the challenge of sticking a carp on the fly rod. It’s a total blast to seal the deal on a carp on the fly!

 

[lycoflyfisher]

I encourage all, if you ever spot actively feeding trout in a clear pool, to sit and watch them for a few min. As others have said, they will mouth all kinds of objects, some of which look nothing like food from the human eye above. I have watched trout mouth the same object multiple times as it drifted through a run, each time dropping further downstream.

 

[Bamboozle]

Charlie Fox told me many moons a go that when fishing cress bugs on the Letort, he would set the hook when he saw them open then close their mouth as his fly drifted past.

It worked for me several times when the lie was directly across or slightly below me.