Today, I took a young lass fishing for trout in Hanningfield. We used worms as bait as it was her first time fishing.

As the wardens suggested floats at 6ft depth, this is what we started on.

No one else was getting fish until a pair of regulars drifted past and connected opposite us. I noticed that they were back drifting with Di-5's and boobies.

When they connected again, I swapped over our traces to split shotted rigs with a 5-6ft length of 6lb leader and dropped them down about 15ft.

Within 30mins, we had 4 fish.


Now, apart from this showing that the correct depth is always key, what astounded me was this...


The water was rather choppy from the breeze and so out rod tips would bounce around anyway but the bites would hardly register even though I was using 10lb braid and 6lb fluoro tippet.

It felt as though the fish would barely nibble at the worms yet when landed, they had near enough swallowed it entirely.


This got me thinking as to how many takes we must miss. Thinking about it, a trout will more likely and readily take a juicy worm over a hard Sally Hanson'd buzzer yet I hardly felt these takes.

I recall reading about divers filming a top American Bass angler retrieving his rubber worm and missing a dozen hits in several casts yet not registering a single knock!


Well, it just struck me as food for thought at a very tired 21:20



Ben

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Have you ever carp fished. I do and have seen on many many occasions how a carp can pick up your traps, move them over a foot stop and spit out the bait and hook without a blip on the alarms or even a nod of the rod tip. It amazes me. Also when stalking trout close in on the clear waters you can see the trout eating rotating your fly around and spit it back out without you feeling a dsmn thing. If it wasn't for the flashes a white in their mouths you wouldn't know what had just happened. Amazing creatures

I've watched trout at Bakewell suck in bread, that the tourists have thrown into the river to feed them, and spit it out in an instant. It must happen all the time without registering a bite/take. I believe that's why we miss so many takes on dries - we can't see the many we miss sub-surface.

Bites/takes only register when the fish are swimming away with our offerings in their mouths, they literally catch themselves.

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Ben, I would say that if the water had been calm you would have seen some more obvious indication on the rod top, and if you had been using floats you certainly would have seen the takes (a la using a bung). However, because you were essentially fishing static rather than retrieving the fish didn't feel much resistance so didn't bolt off, as they often do in effect when retrieving (or if deliberately fishing a bolt rig for example when carp fishing), and because you weren't using any form of bite indicator other than a very unstable rod top, you couldn't see the takes. I don't know if you held the line at all (like when touch legering) but if you had you make have felt them a bit better, its surprising how sensitive your fingers are, especially as you say were using braid. Its the same reason static fished boobies can result in deeply hooked fish. Fishing at 15' using a float is possible - you'd just have to set it up as a sliding float. Another alternative would be to add weight like you did, drop the bait right to the bottom and slowly inch it/jig it back up, I reckon you'd get some strong takes doing that? (as well as finding out where the fish were)

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