My regular readers know I’m mostly a dry fly fisher. I found a couple of trout rising regularly on my favorite river recently and struggled to find the right fly. I didn’t want to give up and move to a different location hoping to find more rising fish. As I tied on a fly, cast, clipped the line and tied on more flies than I care to remember, I started thinking to myself. It happens a lot on the river where I can get lost in my thoughts. I came to the realization that persistence or insanity is a fine line in fly fishing. You know the old saying… “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
I finally caught this beautiful Rainbow. It was only about 13 inches long, but I was satisfied to coax this beauty into eat one of my flies.
It wasn’t the first fly I tried.
Here are most, but not all of the flies I tried on this fish.
It rose and nipped at a size 16 Improved Sparkle Dun PMD and a size 18 RiverKeeper Soft Hackle Cripple PMD.
It also rose and looked at these size 16 Swisher and Richards Floating Nymphs. We call those “drive-by’s”.
I really couldn’t tell what the fish was keying on. I started to think it was opportunistic…eating most insects floating through the feeding window. So I tied and fished all those other flies to no avail.
The fly which finally worked was a CDC Loop Wing Emerger – PMD. Look carefully and you might be able to notice there is not a hook point. That’s right…somehow I broke off the point without knowing. Or it didn’t have a hook point when I pulled it out of my fly box and tied it to my 6X tippet. Remarkedly, it still hooked the trout!
This is a better view of the fly.
What do you think…persistence or insanity?
Enjoy…go fish!
Thanks John/! I was on the Metolius yesterday and fish were rising, I tried every fly pattern I could think of! Had some hard looks and very hard refusals! But it was a lovely day none the less!
Persistence for sure John! I’ve done that more than a few times, it’s when I get in the “catch the uncatchable fish” mindset. The first time I went to Jeff’s shop (The Fly Fisher’s Place) in Sisters in the mid-90’s I bought a rod from him, and he gave me a tee shirt. The shirt read something like: The Fly Fisher’s Evolution: Catch a Fish, Catch Lots of Fish, Catch a Big Fish, Catch Lots of Big Fish, and finally, Catch the Uncatchable Fish. I find that’s true of my own evolution, although I do drift back into the earlier stages from time to time. And certainly dry fly fishing is the epitome of that stage! Love your blog!