On Sunday whilst fishing a small Stillwater I had been fishing the opposite bank to someone learning to cast. He was slapping the water with his false casting and I mean slapping the water. The fishing was not great and after 2 hours I had struggled to get 2 Rainbows both on quite a deep fished nymph. Anyway after 10 minutes of this guy going home I spotted trout slurping something just below the surface. I moved round to where the guy had been casting and started to get trout almost every cast on emerger patterns. The rest of the water had no surface feeding going on just this small area were all the water slapping had occurred: confused: coincidence or not?

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Allan
Only dead fish go with the flow.

One of the oldest dodges in the book is to shake a tree or bush on the upwind side of a lake. It often saves a blank day.

Bob Church was an expert at it.

Id say the fish just congragated where this guy was casting as they witnessed his angling capabilities and felt safest there.

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Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
YOU DONT NEED EYES TO SEE YOU NEED VISION

The best of it was after around 10 feet of fly line landed on the water on a false cast he was almost using a Haul to get the line airborne again. The water was like when you open a new bottle of Coke. There was someone with him giving instruction I hope the poor chap wasn’t paying 20 quid per hour for the instruction.

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Allan
Only dead fish go with the flow.

if that is the case mr orange then I will send a list of the times, dates and venues I will be fishing in the coming months to the highest bidder.........just turn up 10 mins after me and it is trout o'clock for somebody!!

If i was being kind, i'd say his line hitting the water sounded like a handful of pellets, attracting the fish rather than spooking them, rather like ringing the dinner bell!

Otherwise, he had a pocket full of maggots/pellets. (Ive seen it done, sadly)

On a few visits to egypt the local fisherman on the Nile use a peice of wood to slap the surface of the water with and then start pulling in the net so i would say that slapping the water certainly is an atractant to fish.

Alan.

It specifically attracts catfish.

A technique I used many times in South Africa was to tap the water with the tip of the rod and have a large wooly worm type fly or jig underneath the water in wait.

A well known technique used for catfish is 'clonking'. A 'clonk' is a carved, curved wooden device that is chopped into the water with a stabbing action and it makes a noise that attracts the 'cats'. Very popular in France on the larger rivers I believe. ( ... and no, it's not April 1st!)

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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]

Aye but surely Dick Walker must have shown him how to do it in the first place...