Does lifting a line off the water cause noise that puts down fish?

[Silver Creek]

In the current edition of Mid Atlantic Fly Fishing Guide Lefty Kreh writes that lifting the line, even a foot of it, off the water will cause noise underwater that will put down fish. He recommends, therefore, retrieving line so that only the leader is lifted off the water.

The question was not improperly lifting the line. It was not noisily, rapidly, rashly, or any other adjective. Placing an a adjective such as "improperly" creates a tautology. One could say lifting the line "silently" and say that Lefty is wrong.

The question is how the Lefty's recommendation to take in all the line up to the leader is to be interpreted. Is it all the time as the the statement seems to suggest? If so, Lefty is wrong in my opinion. I believe it is not necessary to strip in all the line up to the leader before recasting in every cast to avoid spooking the fish. I don't know of anyone that does that in every case.

I think Lefty would be surprised if we interpreted his statement to be in every case. Although Lefty does not use a conditional "if" or "when" to limit his statement, I think it is a presupposition or assumption that the angler must make when interpreting the meaning of his statement. To do otherwise to me is so obviously wrong that one has to make this logical presupposition to understand what Lefty means.