Refusals

[steve watkins]

You tie on your old faithful, carefully find your target, lay out a nice cast, the trout comes up, and and Bam; Nothing, zero, zelch.  How do guys handle refusals?  Smaller fly of the same type and size, different fly, smaller tippet, etc.

Inquiring minds want to know, Not that I have that problem just saying.

steve

[Michael Exl]

Cursing and flipping off the fish.

But in all seriousness I usually will alter my presentation. More often then not it is something in the presentation that makes the fish not commit. Then I will change the tippet. The fly is always the last thing that I change. Presentation is always first for me.

-Mike

[Rich Kovars]

Throw rocks at it. 🙂

[Rick Marcum]

Presentation… As long as you didn’t spook the fish with it.

[Tim Angeli]

Presentation… As long as you didn’t spook the fish with it.

[Mike McKeown]

Depend on how good a fish it is…

I have rested a fish for 30 minutes, before makeing cast number 2 at it… normaly changing the fly is also key, try changing to an emerging stage of the same insect, or go subsurface…

But often resting the pool is good enough.

If you havent spook’d the fish and it is still hard on the feed, then change the angle slightly, a step left or right might just get rid of micro drag.

Or you can create your own hatch, just keep drifting the same fly over the fish, I have seen that work pretty well on alpine trout… LOL, but it works.

[Rob Snowhite]

^
what he said.

if i’m fishing with my best friend, i’ll call him over and give him a go at the fish. he usually gets the fish with patience, fly choice, presentation

watching that is almost more satisfying that if i had caught the fish.

we’ve also taken pics of where the fish was and left a marker on the stream bank to indicate where the refusal was-then come back later and try at it again.

[Author]

Posts