There are some good posts on here about dubious advice and misconceptions

The conclusion i have come to is that Trout don't read the forums, or the books ,or the magazines and they do what they bloody well want.

River Trout easily spooked ? I had a big browny take a mayfly off the surface between my legs , when i was walking up stream !

Big trout are wise canny old trout ? Ive seen a 4 pounder on the usk ,mid stream, blazing sunshine , in 12 inches of calm gin clear water, sunbathing ?

Match the hatch ? If its fluffy and floats that'll do for me !

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" If you stand by the river long enough the bodies of all your enemies will float by"

Dr Doolittle,....when you can speak to the fishes and understand why??...give me a call

Why do you go fishing?

To prove the experts wrong ?...maybe?

I agree generally with what you are saying- trout do their own thing! I to, have had the Mayfly experience except the Trout rose 3 inches behind my leg, in my full view and then took my dry which I had in my hand and dropped on its nose.

T'was of course a stocky- this is a point to consider- a lot of waters stock brownies before a Mayfly hatch- BUT even so this generalisation that trout (even wild canny ones) are more oblivious to anthing including us during the Mayfly, is true. Like us they get a bit one track minded. I could go on as to why this might be an advantage for trout as a species in terms of genetics i.e. make hay why the sun shines- (stuff your faces)- and to hell with the cosequences- (its worth taking a risk), but that would be getting a bit analytical.

Seen many trout behaving oddly but more humans- Like you I take notice when a TROUT behaves oddly!!

But generally river trout are spooky unless above, in fast or coloured water etc......there are 100 exceptions to all general rules which still might be generally true.

Never say never in fly fishing!!

I'm with you on matching the hatch! I fish with only 2 or 3 dry patterns and seem to catch wether they are on x, y or winged olive, sedge etc.

Good thought provoking post! Glad trout can't read as well!

Jonfish123
Himalayan Fly Fishing in Paradise on Earth

You do witness some things that make you wonder sometimes.

I have, on many occasions throughout my 40+ years fly-fishing, seen anglers thrashing at the water and whipping up waves and waves of white foam.

I've thought to myself, that poor b*****ds never going to catch, only to look around a few minutes later and see them playing a trout!

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How poor a thing, sometimes I find,
Will captivate a greedy mind - Isaac Walton.

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*****©(

Glad someone has cracked this one open - I fished loads last year in the same river that I walk the dog by nearly every day.

I know where fish hang fairly well now and it's easilly predictable, you see the same ones in the same spots often. Sometimes when in they're in the mood you could chuck anything at them and hook them, other times they just ignore your efforts.

I've even began to think that sometimes with Grayling, it's good to drive them up river a bit and agitate them into taking ... on a good evening it's like they can't help themselves but chomp on your hook.

Isn't this the essence of what makes fishing, and trout fishing in particular, such an all embracing enigma and why it's so enthralling.

One of my favourite streams is the Irfon where I've had days where you can't get within 15ft of the water's edge without seeing disappearing bow waves and tails and yet others when your fly is taken 'on the dangle' within a yard of your legs whilst you're looking at the contents of your fly box - crazy but would we have it any other way?

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[I]"I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel."[/I] Roderick L Haig-Brown

[url]www.wildfly.net[/url]

[url]http://www.gameanglinginstructors.co.uk/[/url]

I think we are getting drawn into the idea that all fish have the same level of intelegence,I suspect fish act stupidly at times for the very simple reason that like humans and other creatures some of them are thick.

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Lang may yer lum reek

I think they're all pretty thick but by 'thick' I mean that they are not into intellectualising about their next meal like someone on an episode of Master Chef, rather that they are programmed to act on instinct / follow patterns of behaviour and that sometimes the programmed priorities change the emphasis of how they act.

It might be that say the sensitivity of their ‘safety valve’ is over ridden in favour of satisfying the feeding / attacking instinct because of a particular circumstance and a purely instinctive response to it, in certain temperatures / at a certain time / light levels etc, food ‘type x’ is the priority and their brain is switched into a different mode. Many external and internal factors must all influence this mode?

When discussing the rise forms of trout, Vincent Marinaro explains that when the trout switch from feeding from one type of insect to another, they change the way they feed / take the fly and the rise forms changes as a result. He suggests that if there is a change in the prevailing hatch, the trout may still display the same pattern of behaviour as that displayed for the previous hatch, in a short overlap period and warns that you need to be careful of misreading rise forms because of this.

So I propose (for the sake of debate) that it’s all down to programming, not any higher level thought process?

Tommy
You should get an award for the best thread of the new year.
Absolutely spot on,never a truer word said, catching fish is pretty easy, its the anglers tactics that can be wrong.
All said and done though when their natural food source is not in abundance it gets harder.
I guess its the harder ones we crave.

...but then again;

'We do not go rushing about the dining room for endless hours, plucking a little bite here and there, tasting some, inspecting some, eating some; sometimes spitting out some that we do not like.
A trout does all this and more. He is forever sorting out things, constantly bringing all possible food under close scrutiny; and he questions every bite that he gets.'

Not my words of course but perhaps it does sound like an episode of Master Chef after all?