On Jul 22, 1:25*pm, wrote:
On Jul 20, 8:46 am, riverman wrote:

I was getting strikes
on almost every cast, and eventually started 'blind setting'...a sort
of bizarre method where I just randomly set the hook at a point in the
river, cast back over the same line and set the hook a foot farther
downstream, recast and drift, setting the hook another foot farther
downstream. I have decided (based on getting all sorts of hookups with
this method), that I am getting LOTS of takes without feeling them
with each drift, and by blind setting, I actually increase the odds of
hooking up.

Curious, did you have many foul hooked fish or fish hooked outside the
mouth? On rivers with lots of fish in them, doing the above would, in
my experience, result in lot's of foul hooks. Even without "blind
setting", dead drift nymphing (and other subsurface techniques)
through runs with reasonably dense fish populations results in not-so-
rare foul hookups. The main legal method for catching sockeye in
Alaska is to "snag" them in or near the mouth with a fly.

I foul hooked one 13" brown in 11-mile canyon in Colorado back in
June, out of about 6-7 hours of nymph fishing. Another time I was
streamer fishing on the San Juan in Texas hole right at sundown,
letting the streamer swing and then _slowly_ bringing it back up along
the current's edge. Willi and I think Danl were there. I tail hooked
two browns, both nice size, both on the very slow up current retrieve.
I imagine that either the fish felt the line hit their side/back/belly
and "darted" away, catching the line/fly with their tail, or they
purposely whacked the fly with their tail to stun it? see if it was
alive? get rid of it?

Jon.

No foul hooks at all, Jon. But we were using #20 and #22 flies mostly,
so I sort of wonder if they could even foul hook, rather than skip off
the fish. But almost every one of my catches was in the fishes tongue
rather than the cheek or lip, which was new to me.

On this river, at least, I suspect I was getting 5 or 8 gentle takes
per drift, and not really feeling them. Or else the fish were watching
the nymph drift by, and hitting it when it suddenly moved. One of my
catches was just as I was retrieving to recast (not really a cast, as
I was nymphing...sort of a flip back upstream) and the fish leapt
right out of the water and seized the nymph as it broke the surface.

--riverman