Twilight Zone

[buckbarrett]

I went out on Weds. Aug 15 from 4 to 8:30 pm, walked into a riffle and scattered half a dozen (picked up a few glorious chubs) walked some more and found a pool with a fat brown jumping around every 30 seconds, tried everything I had on him and picked up one rainbow. Walked a little more and found 5 or 6 bows stacked up on top of each other 3 feet away from me! They wouldnt move or bite. One was a foot away from me in the underbank and I didnt scare it off. A palamino was 10 yards away and wouldnt take any of the several items that I tried to sell. I went back to the jumping brownie, and, even matched the hatch, but was not even considered. I feel cursed. Can anyone explain this?

 

[Wmass]

The fish may have been stressed. I typically find that fish are sluggish and you can walk right up to most of them when they are stressed by warm water. The activity of the brown is funny though because it doesn't sound like he was stressed at all. I had the same thing happen to me a few weeks back. Saw plenty of fish and got plenty of looks but no one wanted to touch my flies.

 

[Padraic]

I'm with Wmass on this. It could be that the bows in the undercut were stacked up on a seep of cold water. If so, there isn't much that will get them to move. You could almost catch them with your landing net.

The brown is not acting stressed, but if he is keyed on a fly that is either hatching fast or flying just above the surface, the presentation could be really tough. He might have been going after crane flies or midges. Crane flies will flutter just above the surface and dap down briefly. Midges can rise to the surface quickly, and fly off so fast a trout chasing them will "jump" after them. I've not had much success trying to imitate that.

Take stream temperatures before and during your fishing sessions (if you don't). Water temps of 70 or higher will shutdown fishing and contribute to high incidental mortality of the trout. When streams get that warm, you'll want to move to a cooler stream or fish in the mornings.

 

[buckbarrett]

Thats sounds right. after trying different methods, I noticed that if I let it fall to the bottom and waited then pulled up like an emerger, they would take more notice and then ignore it. The next day I went back and did it all over again. Threw everything I had again and caught a beautiful brown on a fly that I tied in a fly tying class from years ago, and dont remember what it is. HA HA