Off the reel or in direct hand contact?

[sagecaster]

Ally Gowans wrote a good article on this recently on Fly fishing and Fly Tying and I have to say that I subscribe in part to his technique.

He maintains that on floating line you should fish a lightly set drag (just enough to resist the pull of the current)as there usually is not enough slack for the fish to turn on the fly without the fish feeling the resistance of the fly line. As the fish takes the fly the line goes out a couple of yards, then lift into the fish. Works every time for me in the Spring and Autumn.On sunk line crank up the drag and as soon as you feel the fish pull into him.

My only change on this is related to the pace of the current. On a fast river like the Spey I set a light drag, no matter what line I'm using, reason being that the current pulls the line tight no matter what line you are using. On a slower river I still set a light drag for the floater but crank up the drag for a sinker.

The only time that this technique doesn't work consistently or any other technique for that matter is when fish "take short". Usually Grilse time in the summer and its important to recognize that sometimes what you feel are fish hitting the fly with their heads and its nowhere near their mouths. I have tried various methods of hooking these fish, its a lottery and they are hooked outside of the mouth I find usually on the top of the nose.

[macd]

I dont think it matters for the most part. How many fish have you hooked while daydreaming-all is quiet, then he's on? That said I dont like to give any slack- it feels wrong.

I hand line all the time- usually a wee fig of 8- just to keep in contact with the fly, or longer draws in slower sections to accentuate movement. As to hooking them while doing this-especially in slow water where the belly cant do the job for you- IME it is best to pause as you feel the fish then, as rennie put it, give him copious amounts of welly- get him on the surface and let battle commence.

The important thing is to maintain your composure and have confidence in your chosen technique.

[splash]

springer said:

splash,

This is an interesting and thought provoking thread, I personally welcome quality subjects like this and ones similar from your gang. It can and does get the grey matter going.

However here comes the BUT

WG in his rather brief reply shows a somewhat blase approach to hooking salmon, basically his suggestion is I believe to creating tension to allow the fish to hook itself and then give it a bit scope for movement when its hooked. This in light of all the other more technical suggestions/methods is the one I would suggest over a season with various lines, styles and densities would be most effective and has been for me IME

When I look at the varied replies to this thread and how one mans style contradicts another's it just proves to me that there is no sure fire way of converting takes into solid hook ups. They all work and on different days with different fish each will be valid but my point is how do we know which day it is? and in what mood are the fish in? Sometimes its obvious how the fish want it but IME more often its not.

Using river trout fishing as an example (something I used to do lots of but now just occasionally) how many times in a day do we miss a fish? Often would be my experience but it was something I hardly thought about as within a short period of time there would be another take and that one would stay on so over a season I would catch a good share of my fish and never really worry or think twice about it.

Now with Salmo the takes can be few and far between, as a result we start to look and question what could we have done to make that one stick regardless of whether we were fishing off the reel, hand lining or figure of eighting and whether fishing fast water or slow.

I myself don't apply any one single technique with regard to achieving a positive hook up, sometimes I would be fishing classic water where the fly swings nicely round to the dangle and would be off the reel, however if I had duffed the cast a little with less than perfect turnover I might have quickly stripped in 2 yds to straighten things out rather than waste valuable time letting the current do it. Where would I put this slack line? Rather than wind in to get 'on the reel' I will happily fish that cast out with a loop, IMO it doesn't really matter as its the tension that I create, whether from the reel of my fingers that will hook the fish.

One thing I am critical off is the lightly set drag while fishing fast water and especially in summer with Grilse about, I seen guys who say ' the reel clicked and a yard shot off but when I lifted there was nothing there' this is as a consequence IMO of giving the fish to much time and it ejecting that nasty hook.

Shooting heads, which usually mean fishing at distance and especially sunk ones will have a natural amount of slack in the system, even the Guideline low stretch ones so for me these are fished with either a slow retrieve and the running line in my left hand, if I feel a pull I pull back with my line hand whilst raising the rod more to start acting as the cushion and lever, it was my initial clamp and pull on the line that did the hooking.

I don't profess to being an expert, I loose fish although not many and don't have the experience of the 70+ fish a year guys in a wide range of different rivers but for me the basic to the whole principle of successful hook ups is tension, however it is created.

For a novice who might look at the complexities of this thread and wonder what he will do when that fish finally takes his offering my very simple advice would be

"Keep ahad laddy" swiftly followed by "lift ya fecking rod up" " ;D

Very interesting post with some very interesting and varied answers, thanks splash

Thanks Springer, my intention was really to ge a bit of dialogue going, not necessarily on how to hook fish but more on how the fly was presented prior to this happening. On Monday, at Ravenswood, I fished the floating line (midspey) for the first time this season. The water was low and clear and the flow in pools like the Crom was much reduced. I was struck by how differently I fished the fly when compared with my previous outings this season when I have deployed the Guideline and Loop shooting head set ups, with a lot more mending (both downsream and up ) to work the fly appropriately. I also fished completely of the reel. Now you may argue that this is a function of the set up, and to a large extent it is, because you obviously can't mend as effectively with the SH , however, I was also struck by some of the limitations of the longer bellied line, ie you cannot tweak it back nearly as effectively as with the SH when you can bring the fly back to the rod tip and then roll cast or go straight into a spey variant. As I mentioned in an earlier post, many of the fish that the guys that I fish with have been caught this way over the last year or so, particularly where fish lie under rock ledges close in. Are we missing these fish when we deploy longer bellied lines?This is why, for me the SH will always be the weapon of choice for fishing the collie.

Finally, thanks for your considered response, they say that there is nothing truly new in fishing but I find that I find out new stuff every time I fish or from dialogue on the forums. If I had to whack it out at 45deg every time on every pool, I'd probably take up golf !

[ludite1]

have any of you fine fishers ever given any thought to the fact that the depth of the pool or indeed the general depth of a river may have an effect on wether to give line to a taking fish or not? I fish the Tyne which i would not class as a deep river, so ive always lifted into a fish as soon as ive felt it, my feeling is that the salmon do not have as much room to turn and drop back with the fly as they would say on the Tweed where giving line seems to work as the norm id be interested in your comments

[paulsewin]

ludite1 said:

have any of you fine fishers ever given any thought to the fact that the depth of the pool or indeed the general depth of a river may have an effect on wether to give line to a taking fish or not? I fish the Tyne which i would not class as a deep river, so ive always lifted into a fish as soon as ive felt it, my feeling is that the salmon do not have as much room to turn and drop back with the fly as they would say on the Tweed where giving line seems to work as the norm id be interested in your comments

I did meet one angler on the Tweed who told me his father used to hold a loop of line, twice as long as the river was deep. His theory was that the fish would have to travel at least this far to return to its lie with the fish.

I've never witnessed the whole process of a fish rising, taking a fly and then returning to its lie so I can only speculate.

May I offer another couple of possible reasons for variations in the hooking procedures.

1. speed of current - a fish broadside to a current will travel further in a fast stream compared with a slower stream.

2. the size of the fish - I would imagine that a larger fish needs more room to turn downstream than a smaller fish and therefore needs to be given a bit more time/line before tightening. It may help explain why some anglers are so successful when striking grilse takes.

I prefer to fish off the reel in most circumstances and seem to enjoy a pretty good conversion rate.

I have noticed something that may interest other "off the reel" anglers. My infrequent contact with salar means that this has been a very slow burning project and 4 or 5 sucesses does not constitute a solution to this problem.

Here's the senario, a gentle pluck and the reel starts to sing. Normally, the handle goes round twice before I've moved my rod into a position where I can raise the tip. So as the reel continues to purr, I raise the tip and lightly palm the reel. The tip of the rod bends into the fish and that is usually the end of the story.

But sometimes this happens. In my mind, I visualise a fish rising to the fly and swimming upstream with it before letting it go. BUT I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS HAPPEN. The gentle pluck is the same, the reel starts to sing but after less than a full turn, the reel goes silent and the line goes slack. The solution which does have a very high success rate, is to palm the reel and lift the rod tip the moment the reel stops turning.

Of course, if I tightened as soon as I felt the fish, this whole performance would be unneccessary.

I think it was Reg Ryghini who concluded that the hooking procedure to use is the one that loses you, the individual angler, the least number of fish.

Much of our thinking about hooking procedures is still dominated by the early greased line proponents. But I wonder how many of the fish we catch are actually hooked in the scissors. I think that the modern hooks, especially doubles and trebles, are so sharp that they "hook" the first part of the mouth they touch. A large number of fish I catch are actually hooked between the tongue and the inside of the lower jaw.

I also believe that the fish actually hooks itself against the weight of the flyline. I haven't tried this yet but I wonder how far I would have to pull a floating line, lying on a pond, before I managed to drive a hook point into my finger. I might substitue a banana for my finger.

This exercise may provide some sort of proof as to how much input or impact we actually have on the hooking procedure. I do hope it's not all dependent on salar's moods.

[ludite1]

thanks for your input Paulsewin.
guess ill just stick to pulling back when ifeel a pull ,what i have noticed is the more you anticapate a take the less likely you are to get one? how many times have you been fishing a hot spot fishing with that feeling mr salmbo is going to take as you make the perfect cast into his dwelling area, tensed up ready to hook the fish of a life time only to be let down by the fishing gods? past the hotspot your attention starts to waver as you fish the rest of the water, then just as your fly is drifting across the steam your attention is diverted by some wildlife of some discription, or you light a f*g, up pops mr salmon, sees your not paying attention, decides to give you the fright of your life, resulting in either a very well hooked salmon or the air turns blue with curses at missing what might be the only chance of the day? ya gotta laugh weve all been there.