Am I a slow learner?

I wonder if there has been information around for years that I am unaware of. With imitations of baitfish I've always been bothered with short strikes from trout yet I note many popular streamers and bucktail type flies being tied on only modestly long hooks. An extreme example would be a Clouser on a Mustad 3366. By comparison I see classical New England trolling flies tied on hooks 8XL and longer. As a referance I have noted that when I use spinning lures I will much less frequently hook a trout on the front hook of a multi-hook lure. My conclusion is that trout hit streamers from the back while bass will hit a lure more broadside. Maybe this is because their mouth is bigger. Am I wrong or is this something I should have known about long ago?

Hi, Ray
I know that when a bass ambushes a baitfish it will inhale the prey head first. I don't know for sure about trout and the various smaller prey that they may eat (they are probably the same, though), but the spiny fins on bream and smaller bass make it all but impossible for a bass (or a bream, for that matter) to swallow their catch tail first.
Joe

Ray,

Bass are 'engulf feeders', they suck in their prey, all of it all at once. They then 'crush it' (you can feel the crushing plates inside their oral cavity) to kill it before swallowing it. They always take baitfish from the head (if they hit from the side, they hit the head end).

I think that trout 'grab' or 'bite' their prey, but I'm not sure of that...spent lots of time studying bass, trout not so much.

All I can add is that I often tie in trailer or stinger hooks on some of my trout streamers to get 'short strikers'. It works well, but be sure to check local regulations.....

Buddy

I believe the popularity of articulated streamers is a result of the short strike. I recently fished a lake for trout where I missed most of the hits due to this. I went home and tied up the same pattern using Gamakatsu hooks, which are wicked sharp, and never missed a fish.:confused:

A lot of my bluegill and trout flies "cross over". I will use them for warmwater and trout. A vast majority of my flies are tied with shorter tails than I originally started out with. Tail nibblers get bit around here, guaranteed! haha

I'm working on a freshwater FEB fly right now that will go against this theory, but we'll see how it works out.

I've been interested in the short strike problem as well. There seem to be lots of opinions on just how trout strike at prey. I'm curious to hear others responses.

Kelly Gallop's book (Fishing Streamers for Trophy Trout) suggests that the 'short strikes' are actually body slams or tail slaps intended to stun the prey, The trout then swims down stream looking for a stunned fish to swallow 'head first'. He supports the head first theory by pointing out that lots of the prey species have sharp spines and fins that would make it hard to swallow them any other way. He suggests casting back to the strike location and dead drifting the streamer to mimic a stunned fish.

I tried adding stinger hooks, unfortunalty this resulted in a lot of gut hooked trout so I stopped using them.

Other sources suggest that hooks with extra long shanks, like the ones used on Eastern trolling steamers are easier for the fish to throw. The longer shank has more drag in the water and provides more leverage as the fish shakes it's head side to side. This school of thought prefers the small shank on a circle hook used in combination with a tube style fly.

Still others suggest that the short strike is a result of a larger fish defending it's territory. The fish isn't hungry or trying to eat the streamer at all. Instead it's ramming or slapping at the intruder to chase it away. I've foul hooked enough trout in the side or tail to lend some support to this theory.

I'm not sure what the answer is, perhaps 'bumps' and short strikes are just part of streamer fishing?

Ray -

Regarding trout.

I don't do a lot of streamer fishing, and almost all that I do involves a very simple sculpin / baitfish pattern tied with a pine squirrel zonker. ( That fly will likely be a FOTW in the next week or two. )

I do get hits or strikes that don't hook up. I don't attribute them to short strikes, as such, but they may be. Doesn't really matter, because either the fish is hooked or you get the thrill ( and maybe disappointment ) of the hit. The streamer I use has about half the fly in front of the bend of the hook and about half of it behind ( off ) the hook. It is typically presented in moving water across or down and across and swung and stripped across the current. My sense is that the trout are typically taking it from the rear and probably spitting it out, sometimes in a way that the hook nicks them and produces a "hit" and sometimes in a way that the hook finds something solid resulting in a hook up. Brown trout, in particular, are known to follow a sculpin / baitfish pattern, often times a long way, like twenty feet or more, before striking.

My sense of what they are doing is based partly on the spin fishing I used to do using spoons. While I have seen a trout charge the spoon from the side and take it broadside a few times, it is common to see trout follow the spoon before taking it. Same thing with jigs. In addition to my own limited experience with jigs which tracked with my experience fishing spoons, I watched a fellow using a large light colored jig one day from the vantage point of a high bank ( on the South Fork of the Snake ). Time and again, one or more, usually more, browns followed the jig some distance before one would close on it and take it. On that occasion, not a single fish took the jig from the side.

Not saying that hook position in the fly is not a factor in short strikes by trout, and I do know some really good fishermen who swear by stinger hooks or articulated flies with a hook only at the rear of the streamer - but my experience suggests that hook position is a secondary consideration in trout streamer fishing.

John

One thing I notice (and do myself much of the time) is that when people fish streamers and get a hit, they raise the rod to set the hook. If the fish has missed, that moves the fly out of the field of view of the fish (and many times the water entirely). Strip striking when fishing streamers may increase your odds, since when a fish hits and you miss, the fly is still close by, and has done nothing unnatural, just frantically darted away a foot or so. I have watched big browns take a fly several times before I hook them ( or miss them for good).

And yes, they take them from the back most of the time, although approaches from the rear with a sideways slash of the head are common as well when I can see what is going on.

Hi,

I was lake fishing one day and the water was crystal clear. I could cast out and see the fly for pretty much the whole retrieve. I was using a hairwing streamer, the Hammlim Minnow, which is listed in the archives for the FOTW. Anyway, I was interested in watching how the fly responded to different retrieves when a brown came out of the weeds and followed it, slowly catching up. I struck too soon the first time, but 20 minutes later, the same (?) fish returned, started following the fly again, and this time I waited a bit. The take was from behind, and once it grabbed the fly it quickly turned and headed the other way back to the weeds.

On another occasion fishing a hole in the Waiteti stream (a slow moving river; very cannal like) when I was fishing a Copper Dorothy, (a New Zealand matuka streamer), my wife could see a rainbow following it and watched the take, again grabbing from behind the streamer. In the same hole, I had a few fish follow streamers as I stripped them (wouldn't follow a slow one), and appeared to be closing in to strike from behind although I would run out of room before the take and once I slowed down the strip, they got bored and would break off pursuit.

Anyway, from these limited observations, it appears to me that both browns and rainbows will, at least some of the time, follow a streamer and strike it from behind. As for "taking short", I figured that probably reflected more the hook not setting, so the fish didn't nip the tail, but the hook didn't nip the fish either.

- Jeff