Spooked Fish

[kennebec12 0]

So you're fishing along and you come on a good hole and you slip and spook all the fish, or you cast and slap the water. The fish are now spooked, hiding between some rocks. Every now and then this happens and you know there is a good fish in that hole. What do you guys find the cool down time is for the fish? Close to the same for most fish? I find if I go fish elsewhere I can usually come back in a half hour and the fish will be feeding normally again.

[JSzymczyk 0]

around here, if you go somewhere else for half an hour... some other jackass will splash through the middle of the hole then complain to you how "I used to catch fish here when I was a kid, but it ain't like it used to be!"

[Adam Saarinen 0]

Exactly what JSzymczyk said! If you go to another pool or a spot for a bit, someone else will usually come & flog the water with a weighted fly! And if you stay there calm & wait a while, eat your lunch, play with your phone or what ever? Some A-hole will come & not even say hello or ask if he is bothering you? Just start flogging the water with 2 or 3 weighted flies on the end of the line! A dryfly fishermans worst nightmare & thats how punch ups start on the river! Good time to start again might be first thing in the morning on that pool if you can? After the river foggers have been there all evening! I'm a dryfly junkie & practice oldschool etiket! I always ask another dryfly fisherman how bigger area he wants? I know a couple of of people that are only night time fisherman, but the summer sun dosen't go down here, just the water floggers go to bed! Welcome to another part of the pazzel flyfishing is!:-)

[Morrowboarder 0]

Sorry, I think this is hilarious as I can relate to what's been said. I usually hike farther than most, but there will always be "that guy". I have a brown trout replica on my wall and I vividly remember trying to catch that fish after a good spook. Small Minnesota stream, close quarters casting and I snagged up on some overhang. Left the hole for a couple hours and first cast it took an olive marabou muddler.

[Crackaig 0]

Took a friend to fish the R. Aire one evening after the Saturday at the CLA Game Fair. About 1/2 mile up stream from the place we parked the river opens out into a long flat pool. There are often fish in the plunge below this pool so it is good to wade into that from the thin water below, working upstream as you go. Having taken one from the plunge pool I set him up at the bottom of the long pool, and climbed up the hill a little way to spot for him. Fish were rising sporadically all the way up the pool. If you are careful you can take up to 3 fish from this pool before they all wise up.

As he started to lengthen line I saw two fish turn and move down stream. I said, "Drop your line behind you, and freeze." He made another false cast. the two fish turned and sped through the whole pool spooking every trout for about 100 yards. Bow waves were going every which way across the water. That is one way the fish spook. I find it will take an hour or more for the pool to recover from this.

 

By far the worst though are the fish that just drop back slightly from their feeding station. Lower down the same river, with another friend, we spotted two trout holding station together taking it in turns to rise to the stream of olives. Our arrival must have been noticed. The fish didn't flee, they just dropped back and inch or two and stopped rising. Not all out spooked just suspicious. Now that little pool has only one way in. You have to wade up from below. It is in a tunnel of trees. You can't get out to either side, and wading back down is bordering on dangerous. To move on you must wade through the pool. Now do you stand as still as you can and wait, or give up on these fish? If you are still, and quiet, the fish will start to rise again. At first tentatively, then with more confidence. It may take 10 or 15 minutes for them to start to rise again. How long do you give them then? I don't have a definitive answer, but I do like to see them rising with confidence before I cast. How long would you wait? That day we eventually gave up.

 

Cheers,

C.

[Stevester 0]

I spent a lot of my first few fly fishing years spooking fish. Even now I will occasionally spook a fish that is in a place that I didn't expect, often in water that I know well. Just reiterates the fact that there are no absolutes in fishing.

 

As to the question, wild fish take a lot longer than recently stocked fish to calm down after something upsets them.

 

Steve

[vicrider 0]

I think there's a hierarchy of nervousness among fish besides stocked or wild. I've spooked brook trout, and some nice ones, that were back in their lane within minutes. By the time I quit shaking they were on the feed again. Bass and Rainbows I always figured were over their spooking in 15 minutes or less. Browns could be the worst. I've sat and waited for many minutes, maybe a half hour or better, and not seem them show themselves again.

 

Here's another thought on spooking fish. Being silent. I know I've spooked fish with clumsy approaches many times but I've also laid on a bank and screamed as loud as I could at a feeding fish directly below me and not had them bothered in any way unless I moved to spook them. I'm not convinced voices above the water are spooking fish. Bang a boat, thud the bank walking like an elephant, kicking rocks together, sure, but scream and talk all you want. Up north we've caught many many steelhead, salmon, lakers, and natives in the rivers while screaming and yelling to be heard across a river from each other.

[mikechell 0]

I've seen way to many yokels fishing with a radio playing to believe above water sound bothers the fish ... I agree with Vic on that. I can't speak of trout, nor of small shallow brooks and creeks.

But I've seen bass jerk and cower near cover when a loud banging in the boat spooked them. I've watched as they warily drifted near the cover, slowly changing their view to scan what ever it is they see. Then, within 5 minutes or so, they come right back out and start prowling again. (I didn't time them, but my attention span was still on them, so I am pretty sure it was not much more than 5 minutes)

I've also watched good sized bass "spook" off an area, only to move 20 feet or so and start feeding again.

I know shallow, small streams are different, there aren't as many places to run to, so the fish have different instinctual reactions.

 

Just putting my two cents in the bucket.

[Adam Saarinen 0]

And why were you screaming at the feeding fish vicrider?:-) I've wanted to a couple of times!

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Since I fish quite a few beginners to the salt we wind up spooking fish on a regular basis.... Not bound to one stream we range far and wide by boat so a spooked fish (or a spooked spot with lots of fish) isn't as frustrating for me as would be for a stream angler on foot... I try to use "spooks" to my advantage since they reveal exactly where the fish were holding and just might give me an edge on the following day (or the next time the tide is similar and we're in that neighborhood..). On more than one occasion one of my anglers has remarked that he couldn't imagine how I knew a big fish would be stationed at a particular spot on the day we were on the water. I rarely admit it's because we'd spooked the spot a day or two before...

 

I was told years ago to use any time when we were clearing a snag (an angler managed to hook a branch, log, or other bit of structure so we were obliged to pole in to retrieve the fly or lure - in the process scaring every fish holding nearby...) to watch carefully for mud boils or fish fleeing a particularly shallow area... That's how I learned many backcountry spots -more by our failures than our successes in a day on the water covering new territory. Since the area I work is huge (my normal operating area is 20 miles east to west and 40 miles north to south in the brackish portions of the Everglades) an average day will have us traveling 60 to 70 miles all told and some of it will always include a few places that I've never worked before (or perhaps not for a few years....).

 

We do have one important advantage since most of our waters, although clear, are stained the color of strong tea so the window where fish can see us approach isn't as good as it would be in the crystal clear waters of the Keys to the south....

[Crackaig 0]

That's an important point Capt Bob makes. Wherever you are fishing, if you spook a fish from somewhere you were not expecting on to be, remember it for future reference.

 

Cheers,

C.

[vicrider 0]

Capt Bob, just wondering, do you fish in a flats boat, a bassboat or an air boat?

[Adam Saarinen 0]

True as! What Capt Bob & Crackaig said! Once spooked a nice fish in a side pocket of water walking past, now i always check that same pocket when water levels are the same & also other samelooking pockets in different places at different water levels!

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

For vic... I work out of a beat up old Maverick flats boat that's just turning 28 years old.... It's slightly less than 17' long and poled day after day (or staked out) in waters that aren't as shallow as I'd like (my skiff needs about ten inches of water with one angler - a bit more than 11 inches to float with two anglers... nowadays there's many skiffs that float a lot shallower - but none more comfortable running distances on sloppy days). I was lucky enough years and years ago to get it as an un-rigged skiff directly from the builder when they were just early in the company's life.... Here's a pic or two on the water, I actually tow it around 20,000 miles a year commuting to one ramp or another (each day is almost 200 miles round trip from Flamingo or Chokoloskee and that's on top of nine hours on the water).

[kennebec12 0]

I'm glad I don't have to worry about other anglers moving in on my spots. I think 7 years ago I saw a guy fishing about a mile downstream from one of my favorite places to fish, and couple years ago a guy was gold panning about a 1/2 mile away. Today, after pulling a fish out of the hole and dropping it back in I got bites after about 10 min. Probably once every trip I'll mess up a nice hole by snagging some underwater branches or gomming around and splashing. But hey there lots of water and lots of fish.