Imitative Patterns: The Knowledge Gap
I was thinking in bed this morning, as I do sometimes, of how unpleasant it would be to have a tube stuck down my throat and the contents of my stomach (mainly beer and kebab) sucked out.
I also thought that even if I had a small brain, a glum looking mouth and mainly lived underwater, except for the odd forced march to the bankside, I'd still find it fairly unpleasant.
The which brings me to my main point: we're rather stuck with the empirical observations of fishermen before catch and release became so prevalent. I can't see that holding a trout and shouting in harassed mother speak 'what did you eat? Spit it out!' is really going to work.
It's possible to see what fish are eating when there's a hatch and when there isn't we have to guess, I guess. On the river I fish (a part of the Itchen system) the stocked fish (particularly our banker, Suicidal Pete as he became known) will eat just about anything presented well and the natives won't. The natives tend to sit deeper, behave more shyly and are very hard to catch.
On top of all this, when I'm on my knees in the water doing a Home Counties version of David Attenbrough ("This amazing little creature darts around and does all its shopping in Waitrose on a Saturday"), I don't really see a whole load of nymphs swimming with their chins out saying 'come on big boy, eat me if you dare'. Pick up a stone, or fiddle with some weed and it's a slightly different tale.
So, unless you can get your nymph pattern to dart around on the bed of the stream from rock to pebble to weed, you're probably fishing a fry imitation, whether it be a GRHE or Pheasant Tail or whatever.
If you're fishing a stocked river like the Test or Itchen, forget the entymology and use a pellet fly, because that's what the fish have eaten for most of their lives and that's imitative (or fish for Grayling, a much worthier and wilder target).
And if you're fishing a river for wild trout and want to know what the fish are eating sub-surface, try bashing yourself over the head with a rock and jumping in and see if they'll nibble on your toes.
For the ultra-purist (which is me until the beginning of the season when I get out my biggest lure and a stick of dynamite) we should be tying:
Imitative dries from bankside observation (head by the gape, hook concealed for live flies, any way round for imitations of spent flies)
Emergers to match the hatch (the one time when the fly gets washed into the stream - I assume. I haven't been able to observe this though)
Fry. Preferably a Dry Fry, with Tongue in Cheek.
Weighted Nymphs (to be fished as close to the river bed as possible). Fishing Weighted Nymphs in a chalksteam in summer I find nigh on impossible, so thankfully most places ban this sort of carry-on.
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Wanted: A polarised monocle.
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oh poop should of done that on a seperate post to get my post count up
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