wrote in message ...
Thanks for the response. I had never thought about it but where I was
fishing the water is crystal clear. I could spy a group of gills and
would
cast into or near them. They would immediatly start swimming to the fly.
Mouth it and go (or spit out) or just turn away when they got a good look
at it, 9 times out of 10 they would look and turn away. but with the live
crickets...BOOM.....no hesitation. MIKE

Another thing to consider:

On any given day (as all experienced fly fishers know), and for no apparent
reason, just about any pattern may be THE magic bullet.....it needn't even
be a normally very productive fly. Hell, sometimes it's a particular
individual specimen of a certain pattern, as has been proved many, many
times. On the face of it, there is no good reason to doubt that a live
cricket might be THE magic bullet on some fine day. On that day you fish
live crickets.......or you critique (loudly) someone else's casting......or
wardrobe.....or whatever.

Wolfgang
who knows that there is a fine and sometimes (though not often) delicate art
to castigating a too successful fishing partner.