Ed,

I suspect that we all miss many more fish than we realize, especially when fishing subsurface. I fish a lot or warm water. When the conditions are right, I can often see the bass take the streamer. Just like you mentioned, when the fly stops forward movement and starts to slowly sink, they slide up to the fly and inhale it. Unfortunately, all to often they exhale it again just as quickly. It would take amazing reflexes to catch these fish as it's usually over before you've actually registered what happened. I use an un-weighted chartreuse over white pattern that I can see fairly well in the water. I can't count the number of times I've seen the fly simply disappear almost like a light that has been switched off. I can't see the fish, but I know that it's there and that it has inhaled the fly. I've trained myself to immediately strip strike when the fly suddenly disappears. The number of fish I catch has dramatically increased. If I were to hazard a guess, I'll bet we are unaware of at least 50% of the takes when we fish subsurface.

Jim Smith