Dry Flies, Rivers, Trout & Tarpon.: I Stand Corrected--Somewhat

I've had an eye-opening moment so to speak. Now, I consider myself decently well-read on the subject of what trout in a river might or do see, near as we humans can tell anyway. (Snell's window is a crock though, but that's another subject for another day). I've read most of the respected authors' observations about what flies, bugs, shiny shit, and other things might or do look like from underwater. Gary Lafontaine's underwater observations come to mind. And through my own fishing, I've developed opinions purely from those observations. "Anecdotal evidence" for my misguided friend in Florida.

One of those opinions concerns the tippet floating over trout that are deemed picky or spooky. For years I bought into the theory that the fly had to come first to the fish. Downstream. I mean, that's what I learned at Dead Drift U. on the Fork back in the 80s. Then I watched Rene and others there catching these so-called tough fish by casting straight up over them, or up and across at a pretty steep angle. It took me a while to try it and learn it, but in the last decade my upstream game has worked on the Fork, the Livingston creeks, and most other places I've tried it. I enjoy it and am successful with it. So I concluded that the tippet going over the trout first wasn't near as big of error as some made it out to be. Furthermore, I find myself fishing heavier tippet than most in these places. 4X works just fine on the Fork, Beaverhead, Green, and Missouri. 5x is plenty light on the Livingston creeks. Right over their heads. I'm talking visibility here, not quality of the drift, which increases with softer lighter tippet. Recent discussions with TT on Depuy's about the English chalk streams further cements my thoughts. He says he throws greased tippets right over their heads and they eat it just fine.

Another related conclusion I had is this nonsense about whether your tippet is greased or sunk. Claims have been made in angling literature for a long time that a greased leader is more visible to a trout than a sunk leader. Again, I can hold my own just about everywhere with the leader greased right to the fly. And, it keeps the fly dry, and there's no noisy blurp when you pick it up.

Enter Silver Creek. Uh-oh. In the bright sunshine and glassy surface conditions, I just happen to take notice of something on the bottom of the stream bed. What is that? This big long dark shadowy snake-looking thing as my leader floats past me. Holy shit. How could I have never noticed this before? I mean, it is glaring. And the thickness of the shadow is much greater than that of the tippet. While fishing some runs with clean gravel and a bunch of fish, I watch as the shadow approaches the fish. As soon as it gets within a foot or two of them, they scatter in all directions. These fish can see that shadow coming? Sure seems that way. They certainly notice the shadow passing over their heads. Every single fish reacts and moves. Just for grins I sink the leader and let it float by in front of me, and there is no shadow at all. Only about half of the fish I cover with a sunk tippet move out of the way. Imagine that, all those authors, all this time, were correct.

Now, does the shadow have an effect on most trout in most situations? Not the ones I've been fishing. And I'm still greasing my leader on this creek too, but you can sure as hell bet the fly is coming to them first from upstream. Depending on the sun angle, which now I'll have to pay even more attention to, they could still get shadowed before the fly resches the eat zone.

If there's a tough fish I really want to catch instead of spook, I'll probably rub some mud on the tippet so it sinks. Kind of like the mud on my face.