I was out fishing the other day, and ran into a big mayflie hatch, i had some patterns that matched pertty well, but they wernt hitting it, they werent even hitting the mayflies that were landing on the water. whats going on???
The fish may have been gorging themselves on the emergers or the fish were some place else. Was it mid-day and the sun out? Fish the evening rise next time. Good luck!
i was fishing at about 6:30 to 7:00 pm and the sun was out of sight. i know there is fish in there to, i swim and fish in it all the time.
fishy, Jonezee is probably right since they didn’t seem to be eating - but they may have been eating beneath the surface where you couldn’t see them. Probably nymphs or emerging insects not quite mayflies hatching yet.
LadyFisher, Publisher of
FAOL
I remember my grandmother saying…“When the winds from the east, the fish bite the least”
While this may or may not be true one fact remains, Sometimes the fish just don’t bite. A lot of people swear that it has to do with weather conditions like B.P. but in reality only the fish know and they ain’t talking. 
I always loved the BP argument. Funny that fish feel more of a pressure change by moving just a few inches up or down in the water column than the greatest swings in absolute BP.
Marty
Fishy Guts,
The question “why aren’t the fish
biting?” has plagued man since the beginning
of time.G Well, recent clear water
testing of some flies convinced me that the
fish “Often” bite without us even being
aware of it. I was getting dozens of bites
in the clear waters that I could see, but I
was getting absolutely no indication from
watching my fly line or using an indicator.
From my offshore saltwater days, I
learned that it was entireley possible to
find large concentrations of desirable fish
that would not bite for love nor money.
The only thing that worked was patience.
Often, lots of it. Eventually, as if
someone flipped a switch, they would turn
on and feed. It might take an hour or it
might take 3. But it was usually worth
the patience.G Warm regards, Jim
Guts,
Think of it this way. You are sitting in your favorite spot and before your eyes passes steak after steak, all cooked just right and ready to eat. On the Balcony you see another type of steak, similar but it will take some effort to get to. Being lazy (or opportunistic) would you rise to the occaision and get the single large steak on the balcony or continue to feed yourself with what was passing in front of you.
Same with trout. They eat what is easiest to get and what will provide the most calories gained for their efforts, and this is usually the nymph.
jed
Are you sure they weren’t midging? I’ve seen many a good mayfly hatch come off and yet the fish focus on the emerging midge.
This might be too much here, but here it is. Depending on the mayfly, are they swimmers or crawlers? If they are swimmers, maybe they were only eating the nymphs on the way up. If the nymphs are crawlers, then maybe you need to have your nymph bumping bottom. One poster noted the floating steak, fish (generally) will not expend more energy than they gain from the food source, so this is also correct. Fish have an IQ of 4, maybe. Fish are either eating, waiting to eat, hiding, or mating. The strike instinct of the fish was not activated while you were out there. Perhaps if you know where the fish are, the Leisinring Lift may have been answer. I of course cannot say for sure, nor could I say I would have caught any fish, but these may be a couple thoughts for next time.
Who Knows? It’s hard not to try to think like a fish, but we aren’t good at it… I once fished with a top notch striper fisherman. We found a big pod of large stripers and fished them for an hour before a hit. He said to me when I asked if we should move on to another more cooperative school, “When you find fish like this- you stay on them until they turn on; once one hits- the rest usually fire up and we will tee off on 'em”. A short while later we had a 30lber on and it had followers come up to the boat behind it. We ended up with 9 fish in about 45 minutes up to 40lbs; until it shut down and bluefish moved in. He told me the only sure thing is that eventually they will feed and we needed to be there when it happened. The fish were in 20 ft and we spotted them on sonar BTW… I think its the same on a trout stream. We speculate and think that we are doing something wrong when sometimes they just aren’t ready to eat. If you can wait them out, eventually they will- and it usually doesn’t last that long. If you get a really good hour- you’ve hit it well, but often isn’t it more of a pick? It is for me, in most all fishing I can think of.
“Knowledge is knowing, wisdom is understanding”
I am beginning to belive that the fish book their vacations, through the same agency, that I do! There is no other reason, that whenever I go to a famous fishing area, the fish are not there, when I am. 
~ Parnelli
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