Last Saturday I hit the Little Manistee river early so I could fish ahead of the canoe traffic. The fish liked my fly well enough (a white wooly bugger). Got more hits than I could count. One brave little guy even hit my fly line where it connects with my leader. I failed to set the hook properly on any of them so that after a couple of thrashes, the fish was gone. Grrr... Almost all the hits came as the bugger would swing at the end of the drift and straighten out below me. Any ideas as to why I'm not getting a good hook set? I'm pretty new to fly fishing so I'm sure I'm messing something up. On the bright side, I'm finding fish and getting them to strike. It would be even better if I got to release the fish instead of the fish releasing themselves.

As an aside I found out that when a muskrat swims through the hole I was working the trout shut right down.

Mike
Cadillac, MI