Got to thinking about tail-nips.
On the reservoir today, I had been blanking all morning. Very few fish were coming to the net but people were getting a few pulls without making contact.
After getting fed up with moving around the reservoir without improving things, I settled into a corner that usually fishes well and got down to fishing lures, mostly Cats and Zonkers.
Between 1pm and 2pm I started to get small pulls without making contact. They gradually firmed up and I started making contact but the fish were shedding the hook fairly easily.
After 2pm the pulls became firmer and I started to land fish, although still loosing some but not so quickly.
After 4pm the takes became less firm and I was getting more nips again. By dusk things had more or less dried up.
So what is it about tail-nips?
To say that the fish are playful strikes me as anthropomorphic and after the recent freeze, highly unlikely.
To say that they are curious, seems equally unlikely. They must have seen plenty of lures before and why would they be curious at 1pm and then accept them as prey items at 2pm and then go back to being curious at 4pm?
The same seems true of them being suspicious. Why suspicious at 1pm but not at 2pm, unless they had got used to them in an hour and started to accept them as food. But if suspicious, why approach them in the first place and take a nip? A trout, suspicious of a dry fly, leaves it severely alone (usually)
Are they taking and ejecting quickly? Once again, why eject at 1pm and not at 2pm
Perhaps a change in light or water temperature encouraged feeding at 2pm, which takes us back to what were they doing with the lures at 1pm?
Any thoughts, people?
Tail-nips.
Many thanks.
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