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We all miss fish and lose fish on a fly. Why does it happen? Is it an accident? Is it avoidable? And how can we improve our hookup and landing ratio on the water?
If you’re at the point where you’re worrying about why you are missing and losing fish, then really. . . you know you’re already doing a lot of things right.
Fooling trout is the hard part. Fly fishing is not easy. And trout — especially wild ones — are not forgiving. They don’t grant you much grace. And rarely do trout take lousy presentations. So if you trick a fish into taking your fly, then pat yourself on the back. And when you start to fool them often enough that you notice a trend of missing or losing fish, then again, just know that you’re doing a lot of things right. Convincing trout that a fake fly is the real thing is tough. The rest? Well, it all comes a lot easier.
So, of course we want to land our trout. Missing and losing fish is frustrating after a while, because we sense there’s more that we can do to keep fish buttoned up. And really . . . there is. There are observable causes for trout missing the fly, just as there are mistakes we make on our end that result in another miss or a lost trout.
Like everything else in fishing, there’s a lot of nuance to this topic.
Reasons and strategies for missed and lost trout change whether it’s dry flies, nymphs, wets or streamers. Maybe a trout refuses our dry fly in a quick swirl as it rejects the pattern in a last second decision. It looks like the trout ate, so we set the hook and even feel the hook touch the fish, but we still miss it. This is not a hook setting error. It’s a presentation error. The fish refused the fly.
The same happens with our streamers. And this is where I think we see it the most. When trout charge the streamer and maybe even strike it — but if they don’t eat it, then no amount of perfecting the hook set will catch that fish.
So there’s a lot to see and understand, and this conversation helps bring a lot of that to light.
We Cover the Following
- Future podcast season plans (listener question)
- The difference between missing and losing
- Slack!
- The inevitability of missing and losing fish
- Barbless flies, small flies
- Hook set speed and length
- Late sets
- Why bad drifts create a lot of misses
- Differences between missing fish on all the fly types
- The phantom hook set
- . . . and more
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Resources
READ: Troutbitten | Hook Set at the End of Every Drift
READ: Troutbitten | Plan for the Hook Set
READ: Troutbitten | Don’t Guess — Set the Hook Hard
You can find the dedicated Troutbitten Podcast page at . . .
Season three of the Troutbitten podcast continues with Episode 12 . So look for that one in your Troutbitten podcast feed.
Fish hard, friends.
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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
Great podcast. I think a follow-up article with diagrams should be in the works :).
I definitely feel that fast, shallow runs yield a lot of lost fish. A couple of weeks ago I lost a dozen fish off the same run – I’m not exaggerating those numbers – and got just one in the net (the smallest one I hooked too). I also think you lose a higher percentage of fish the further you cast past the end of the rod tip.
Getting a wild trout to eat your fly is an accomplishment for sure. But successfully hooking, fighting, and netting that trout should not be taken for granted; they need an instructional focus equal to casting and mending skills. Thanks to the TB crew for putting them on the radar screen.
Line control may be the most underrated and underappreciated skill in fly fishing.
And it is probably the most difficult for beginners to get a handle on.
Using a quick, secondary hook set helps to penetrate those cartilaginous (Ha!) jaws and stripping line (not reeling) immediately at hook up has helped me avoid the slack line problem during the fight. I lost many fish trying to get them on the reel too soon before I learned this important lesson.
More of this, please.
That’s a great point, Rick. I think we all would completely agree with every point there. I’d say we should have included that. Missed an important point there. Thanks for the addition.
Cheers.
Dom
Another terrific podcast. I really appreciate the work you guys put into these chats.
I’ve found that some of the fish I lose are foul hooked. I can tell because there is often a scale on the fly that “hooked” the fish. This doesn’t happen often, but when a fish takes off like a runaway train, I can surmise that it’s been foul hooked.
Good call.
Excellent podcast and very timely for me.
I listened to it while driving to todays river where I lost a 19″ brown. The fish took a streamer as soon as that hit the water and it was ‘on’ in the split second it took me to recover some slack. I started to play the fish when I felt the tension. Some head shakes, a short run and the hook came out. I think what I should have done was a proper hook set as soon as I felt the tension, no matter how hard the fish was pulling initially. That way, the hook was either going to come out on the set or it was going to stay in much longer. Would you agree?
Normally I would have chalked this up as an experience. The Troutbitten podcasts, however, has me questioning my approach to everything and this is a very good thing. Thank you, Dom and the rest of the Troutbitten team for the very insightful discussions on little-covered subjects. Listening to you folks has accelerated my learning significantly (even after 25 years of practise).
Excellent
Hi Team,
Thanks for serving up some more food for thought. Seems there’s no end to the learning curve in the challenging pursuit to be the best we can be while having a great time doing it.
The other day I lost three fish in a row. I should have checked sooner. Sometimes operator error is the cause of losing fish. My tippet had gotten wrapped around the fly and was creating a barrier to hooking in properly. I should have check after the first miss. Just another reason why we fish!
I hope I learned a lesson.
Kindest Regards,
Joel
Cheers.