Turning curious into biter.

[ikerajala 0]

Oh Beg your pardon, I have never caught a brown trout in my life.

[phg 0]

I was a little puzzled by that, but I know that some places in Europe have stocked brook trout, so maybe....

 

As trout go, though, brookies are very aggressive, and have, as I said before, a large mouth for their size. They will attack a larger prey than a brown or rainbow of the same size. Still, I've caught 6" browns on size 12 hooks, so that shouldn't be the problem.

[Fly Fishing Russia 0]

Sometimes a smaller fly on a 20-25" tipper tied to the hook bend if the 1st fly does the trick.

[SilverCreek 0]

Piker20, on 15 Jul 2014 - 4:39 PM, said:

Had a stroll along a local stream tonight and in a couple of pools small trout were showing an interest in my fly and following but either turned away as the fly reached shallower water or I tried to increase speed to tempt a snatch, or stop retrieve to see if fish grab as it sank. Tried upping the size of fly and tried different styles of fly but all the same response. The fish were trout and around 8-10inch. How big hook wise do you small water guys go for little brook trout?
Any hints on getting a bite.

What you are describing is a refusal. It is better than the fish totally ignoring your fly, but ultimately, it is still results in the fish not taking your fly.

To diagnose what was going on we need more information. For example, were the fish rising or were you “prospecting” the water? If the fish were rising and refusing, that is very helpful in figuring our what was happening. This raises the possibility that these fish were feeding selectively and your fly and presentation was similar to the natural but as the fish got nearer, it saw something that did not match the the naturals, either in appearance or behavior.

During a hatch, if a fish refuses when I think I have presented the fly naturally, I will go one size smaller or to an earlier stage of the hatch. You went larger thinking that a larger food item will cause the fish to strike but this is a mistake when the fish are selectively feeding. A smaller pattern will work more often because of the possibility of a masking hatch.

If you were prospecting and the fish refused, then it is more difficult to determine why the fish refused. But we can make some conclusions.

Since the fish “turned away as the fly reached shallower water or I tried to increase speed to tempt a snatch, or stop retrieve to see if fish grab as it sank,” obviously changing the retrieve was NOT what a natural food item would do, since this caused the fish to refuse the fly.

You don’t tell us what fly you were using. Usually in a pool, the feeding fish will be at the head or tail of the pool. In a deep pool the fish on the bottom are in the “resting” and are difficult to catch. I will cast just above the pool and let the fly, either a dry or a nymph, drift over the lip of the pool.