Why make catching fish harder than it needs to be?

 

I've said most of this before, but year after year questions come up about which fly or pattern works best. There are several things I know for sure that will help you catch more fish.

1- If an angler catches a fish on a particular pattern he gains confidence in it, fishes it more and will probably catch additional fish with it. But seldom will he fool more than a couple fish a day.

2- If you fish with any fly (Royal Coachman, Cow Dung, Wickhams Fancy, Adams, etc.,etc., long enough, you will catch a fish with it. How many fish ate your yarn strike indicator back before everyone on the river switched to using orange ping pong balls as their strike indicators?

3- Fish know what the real fly looks like, and fish in the WB look closely at every fly they eat. 

4- The closer your fly resembles the flies the fish are feeding on, the more fish will come up and look at it. Many will refuse it, but with good presentations you should catch fish on a regular basis.

5- Fish never miss a fly they want to eat. Have you ever had one that "missed it" come back and eat your fly when you cast it back at him?

5- I'm not saying you will never catch a fish on a comparadun or a parachute pattern, what I'm saying is you will get a lot more fish to both look at and eat your fly if it looks more like the real thing.

6- Many of the patterns still being used were created before catch and release fishing became popular, and are impressionistic more than realistic. Before catch and release fishing, fish never got a chance to learn. Today they know what not to eat!   

7- If you want to increase the number of fish you catch and you tie flies, forget about patterns and tie flies that look like a live one you have brought back and put on the table in front of you as a model. If you don't tie flies, buy ones that are the closest in size and color to what is hatching and use a pair of tying scissors to shape them like the real thing.

8- Fish remember the flies that bit them. Fish new water every time out and you will catch more fish.

9- Fishing the same flies to the same fish every time you fish is a form of insanity that seems to be the  SOP for almost all anglers and for the life of me I don't understand why.

10- The more fish are pressured the harder they are to catch. For the next week or so, you have the opportunity to fish water that's too low for boats to float. Find a riff dumping into a pool on one of the freestones (as long as the water temp is below 70 which it currently is) and you should find fish far more willing to eat your flies than the fish you have been fishing to in the WB.

11- Or, you can say what does he know, and keep right on paying your five dollars to fish at the red barn.