I am fishing deep water and throwing deep stuff. The water is cold so I wait for it get down. Before I can wait for it I see movement in front me. It is a an extra large trout cruising down stream with my presentation in its mouth “like a dog carries a bone”. I felt no bite it happened so quick i was startled and the trout saw me and literally drop it when I saw it and was staring at it.
I’d say its not so much the fly as it is that particular fish. I remember one day late last summer I was throwing a #20 griffith’s gnat to 4-5 trout in a slow pool that were rising sporadically. I lost track of my fly, but thought I’d found it and was watching a grayish speck floating downstream. Eventually I noticed that despite the speck’s drifting, my line was pulling tight, as if I’d gotten it hung up on something. As I raised my rod to try to correct the problem, a trout up at the head of the pool thrashed a few times and spit out the fly it had taken…who knows how long ago. For that fish to have taken the fly in its position, it had to have been holding that thing in its mouth for a good 20-30 seconds.
Spinner, in that case, I’d have probably tried to let the fish swim a good ways downstream, then thrown the fly back in front of it again in one last (mostly useless) attempt to persuade him again. Then went back to fishing the deep pool, trying to keep a tighter line on the sinking presentation.
Many years ago my late husband Castwell and I were steelhead fishing on the Pere Marquette…water was very clear and we watched as my skunk fly passed just outside a reed where a female was laying. I was not aiming for her and would not try and take a spawning fish on the reed, but in this case it wasn’t a problem. A nice male (buck) steelhead picked the fly up and deposited it about two feet away. No question as to what he was doing, just getting something which wasn’t supposed to be there out of the way. I’ve had others tell me pretty much the same story.