Match the Hatch... Fact or Fiction?

[NJFred]

[quote author=AaronJasper link=topic=3253.msg27608#msg27608 date=1255110327]
"Matching the Hatch" has many merits. When trout are feeding selectively (keying in on one insect), it is a must. I will not say that it is not the right way to go about dry fly fishing 100 percent of the time. As we know there are so many variables that no technique works 100 percent of the time. However, a "match the hatch" angler is going to out fish the person who is fishing more impressionistic flies more often than not. There are times when it pays to think impressionistic or non hatch matching. One time that comes to mind is on the Delaware, when the trout are keying in on the tiny bwos. Usually with this hatch there are isonychia hatching. Fishing an isonychia pattern, which can be presented with less drag over conflicting currents than the smaller size 22-24 olive dries, will yield more fish even though the trout are keying in on the smaller flies. I have seen many a selective feeder take the opportunity to consume the larger isonychia.

So the answer in my opinion is that "match the hatch" is indeed fact the majority of time when presenting surface fly patterns to surface feeding fish. Now dry/dropper and dries that are used as "searching patterns" are a totally different topic due to the fact that they are designed to elicit a certain response from a fish and that is to bring them to the surface to feed on your offerings, and these qualities are no often found in the flies that are used to match the hatch.
[/quote]

Aaron ... your example above, at least in my book, is matching the hatch. The ISOs are around enough to be on the menu as well as the tiny BWOs. So by fishing the ISO you are matching the hatch. You also said something really really smart (Which I'm not surprized as you are a smart guy!) The larger ISO will give the angler a better chance as it won't drag as much. I have seen this on the Delaware time and time again. BTW... congrats on the new boat. I suspect we will see you more on the Delaware... Be careful... it's made more dry fly guys outta fisherman than any other river! :P

[AaronJasper]

Fred,

I have been known to pitch dries to risers on occasion !

[sipper]

Rare black rainbow trout Nice footage titled "rare black rainbow trout" from a youtube post. Trout freely sipping spent spinners in slack water. Could be trico spinners. Video is very educational as it clearly shows how trout really drop their guard and zone in on a particular fare. Some call this "rythm feeding." the spent spinners are so voluminous that the trout can feed w absolute confidence. it will simply ingnore or dismiss any slight variation in the fly or the drift. the slightest drag of the artificial will turn the trout off and it will simply take the next available fly. Trout are quick to dismiss artificials knowing that another real one is a just a moment away. They won't break the pattern and take different fly because they are kind of in a buffulo herd mentality. To break the feeding pattern is like the buffulo that breaks away from the herd and gets taken by the tiger. just had to share this clip as it really captures the essence of the importance of matching the hatch. The trico hatch has been a little weak so far but huge holdovers are on the spinners. Notice in the clip the guy says "this is the third day this fish was here...." A great thing about big experienced fish is that they will return day after day to the same feeding lane if the spinners keep coming. big fish love the slack water as spinners can really build up to nice volume making it very productive and efficient for the fish. So if ya break one off or spook one..... go back the next day or even a short while later and they will be back on the feed. Time up your cast to suit the trouts "rythm," dead drift, hold your breath...........

whatevr the deal is w the "black trout" is irrelevent to the sweet footage of a trout zoning in on a pattern. great footage. Highly educational.

[Davyfly]

Sipper.

Interesting post here which l agree with to some extent.

From my own viewpoint here l look at it further this way. With respect to all, in my time l have spent 100s of 1000s of hours fishing trout streams in very many places around the world. My average year here both pleasure fishing and guiding amounts to well over 1600 hours a year on the water, despite all that l cannot give any exact answers to the problems that fly fishers encounter other than this, which was previously posted in this thread. It is more than often the reasoning of the fly fisher why success is not achieved, for very many reasons.

Further there are times no question of doubt that the trouts attention is drawn to ward a specific available food source. We as humans then make judgements, what is the food source, do we have a fly to imitate it and thereafter attempt to present that representation in a manner we believe is acceptable to the fish to take it, as we know it is not always as simple as that.

I doubt there is a single issue that l have not been faced with when it comes to catching trout.
What often as not is by what means do l choose to catch that fish, be it a dry, emerger, nymph, streamer, wet fly or soft hackle for each in its own right determines understanding and relative skills.

The daily routine of a trouts behaviour is variable. There may be a time when there is at that time a abundance of a particular food source which is the one that draws attention. later in the day that is not the case it may be another, which as we know are factors related to periods when a specific species is active. It may be water temperature or DO levels that have changed, overhead light conditions and so on as these are all influential factors so far as the fly fisherman is concerned if we have a bad or a good day.

Often as not we find ourselves in situations that at that time the fish are difficult to catch, another day they are way easier

For whatever reasoning we choose to determine trouts behaviour is very much a subjective matter.
Call it selective if you like or behavioural conditioning it matter not and l see no reason to try and analyse this as there really is no way you can. It is not a science .
What we do as anglers is to attempt to evaluate a situation and deal with it, which is at the end of the day one brought about by experience and the required skill levels needed.

Let me further some thoughts here.

Many years ago in fact in the late 60s l was fishing a very famous limestone lake in Ireland during a very heavy mayfly hatch. It was my early days of fishing waters of this nature and l was not having a good time, but close to me in another boat another was. Now these fish were true wild Browns of genetic strains that had been there for 1000s of years.
There they were gulping down the emergers big time.

After the hatch ceased l rowed over to the angler and asked him what he had been using for on the deck of his boat lay a number of prime trout all over 3lbs in weight. He showed me the flies he was using, not even close to representing the mayfly by a long shot. They were 3 traditional winged wet flies. Ask me why these fish would take such flies, l have no answer, other than there was obviously something that looked right. That single experience taught me a lesson l have never forgot.
Remember these are true wild fish of generations and not stocked fish that no longer retain true genetic traits, they are very much a very different deal.

Then l well remember a time fishing a stillwater when fish were surface feeding taking taking midge pupa. For some weird reason none of us could get a dam fish to take, ridiculous we had caught 1000s in the past doing just that.
My friend decides to strip a large black marabou streamer, bingo he whacked em and so did we all when we did same. Here again l have no answer to this, it makes no sense.
A few days later they would not take the streamer but they sure as heck did the chironomids.
It begs the question why did these fish act this way, for what reason did that black streamer trigger a response when our midge pupa were totally ignored, when you know full well for 95% of the time you would catch them with pupa.

I have witnessed very many similar situations when fish were at the time preoccupied with a specific food source when a means of fishing totally unrelated generated a response.

I am not suggesting that this is the answer for all situations we are faced with when fish are seen and known to be feeding on a specific food source, for it is our reasoning as fly fishers to try and deceive fish with a representation of the food source, it may well be a answer at times.

If there is one factor l know for a fact that can be the deciding factor it is the trouts awareness of human presence and what we do to attempt to do to catch it.
It is the skilled angler who eliminates many of these reasons

DW











I have since seen and experience so many very similar situations

[sipper]

Good points. True words for sure DW. The points you raise may also have alot to due with the effectiveness of terrestrials. A fish may be zoned in on a particular pattern when suddenly a beatle, ant, or an inchworm drop out of nowhere and the pattern is broken for a moment while the trout shifts to inspect and hopefully take the doomed bug.

[Troutastic]

This reminds me of a time I was surf casting on Martha's Vineyard a few years ago. I've asked local residents fishing alongside me about this, and apparently this is a very rare circumstance, but occasionally the krill will get pushed up along the shore lines along the island very close, about 30 yds off shore. I was lucky enough to witness this, and the schoolies of striped bass followed suit, and were so thick that you could see them in the waves as they crested. We watched these fish for a while, where they would just cruise through the masses of krill with their mouths open and filter feed until their bellies content. My dad and I had our surf casting rods and decided to give them a whack. We put on some jerk minnows with no weight, and casted them out in the thick of the fish. As soon as they'd hit the water, we would reel them in and skip them along the surface as fast as we could. Cast after cast, these bass couldn't resist, they would come up and slam it faster than we could retrieve it. I think my dad and I finished the evening with close to 40 fish caught between us.

Just goes to show, striped bass and trout alike, are opportunistic feeders. Sure it can increase your chances to catch fish when you match the hatch, but sometimes going the opposite direction can be just as beneficial. I know that when I fish a spinner fall as thick as the ones on the W. Branch of the Delaware, that is one of the ONLY ways to get those fish to hit... is to have something a little different. Maybe a spinner pattern a little bigger, or a bit flashier, or even a completely different fly. Just something to trigger their predatory instincts and force them to accept your offering.

[Silver Creek]

To what Davy said I would add the following. Whatever trout do, it is a population based phenomena. The reason I make this point is that whether we are catching a fish or not, we often assume that all the fish are doing the same thing and clearly in any biological system of animals, that is not the case. When we catch a fish, we caught a fish that was susceptible to what we did.

In selective feeding, what we are saying is NOT that all the fish are feeding on a single food item but more and more fish are feeding on a single food item. That transition from opportunistic to selective feeding occurs gradually.

We've all had the experience when a fly that was working gradually becomes less effective, in that we catch fewer and fewer fish and the time between fish lengthens. In this case, are we gradually decreasing the population of fish that are susceptible to our fly and technique, or is the population of fish changing what they are susceptible to, or are both things occurring so that our success rate is decreasing? We cannot, with certainly, determine the cause from observing an effect that can have several causes.

To demonstrate what I mean, I was once fishing in a river where the fish were located at an outflow from a fish hatchery sluice. I presume they were feeding on the leftover trout food that was flowing down the sluice. You can imagine that there was a fly fisher directly upstream, directly downstream from me, and directly across from me; and I could not move. I caught several fish and then I could catch no more. Despite making several different casts and presentations, I caught no more fish UNTIL I changed flies to another pattern. Then the same thing happened that no more fish hit my fly until I changed patterns. Clearly, in this case I was picking off fish that happened to be susceptible to one pattern but not another. Why? I have no idea.

The second point I must make is that although it is difficult to know with certainty why I can or cannot catch a fish, it does not matter as long as what I do works. What I am saying is that my reasoning need not be correct as long as it leads to a solution that works.

Allow me to explain my concept this way. We all are familiar with Newton's law of gravity but we may not all be familiar that Newton was ultimately wrong ,and that Einstein was right. Gravity is not really a force that attracts objects as Newton thought but a distortion of the space in which objects moves as Einstein predicted. If it were not so, light photons which have no mass would not bend around large masses in space. But everyday, engineers and physicist use Newton's law because it is straightforward and works here on Earth.

The point of all this is to say that if I believe that it is micro drag that is putting the fish off and I lengthen and go down a tippet size and catch the fish, it does not matter why I did what I did. It only matters that it worked.

Now if I do that consistently and it works consistently, I come to believe that it was drag and the solution is to lengthen and/or go down in tippet size. Is it true and real? Even if it is not true; if the solution works, it does not matter.

Finally, there are a limited category of things we can change when we are fishing. We can change the time of day we fish. We can change the location we fish. We can change the depth that we are fishing. We can change the fly or flies we are using. We can change our rigging. We can change out technique. What else can we do?

I realize that within these categories, there are multiple options that lead to a bewildering array of possibilities. BUT, when faced with a puzzling situation, it helps to go back to basics and rethinking the situation rather than automatically going to the fly box lottery. Once you are on the stream fishing a run - you can only change the following - depth, fly(ies), rigging, and/or technique. Use your experience to consider the situation and the possible solutions, and go from there.

[Duck-butt Chucker]

In terms of "Selective Feeding":

"OPPORTUNISTIC AND SELECTIVE FEEDING

Before launching right into fly design, I'd like to touch on the
topic of opportunistic versus selective feeding. I think we have
a fundamental conceptual mistake here. Trout always feed
opportunistically. Selective feeding on one stage of an insect's
life cycle or on one particular insect through several life stages
is merely a form of opportunistic feeding.

Trout don't have restaurants or refrigerators. They don't decide
that today's menu will feature pizza, chicken, or even trout. They
get what comes along and take what's available. If there are enough
little Baetis (or whatever) sliding down the conveyor belt, that's
what they eat. If the food item is in great enough abundance and
easier to eat than other items, that's what gets gobbled.
Ultimately, the trout's diet is strictly determined by opportunity.

On some insect rich streams, the trout are fortunate enough to be
able to select from a sort of smorgasbord of food items. On other
waters, they never have that chance and take anything that is
offered. This also goes a long way to explaining why fish feeding
in a manner we have labeled as selective will break that pattern to
take other opportunistically offered frauds. Simply stated; what we
usually call selective feeding is not separate from opportunistic
feeding, it's part of opportunistic feeding. We should probably call
it selective focus."

Secondly, in an isolated situation it does not matter if you understand why something worked or why something didn't, however if you have any interest in *consistent repeatability* (as everyone that regularly fly fishes does) then it does matter quite a bit that you can accurately infer/deduce why (or why not) a trout decided to take your offering/refuse your offering this way you can attempt to, both with greater efficacy and greater consistency, solve this same basic issue when it occurs again in the future (as it invariably will) as well as understand how this same issue manifests itself in any other related area.......Furthermore understanding why something works or doesn't work is of even greater significance to a guy like Aaron who also works as a guide since if he couldn't effectively problem solve on stream quickly and efficiently to consistently put his clients on fish then his customer base would severely diminish in the process...so again understanding why something "works" or "does not work" is actually extremely significant, not in and of itself, but in terms of being able to acquire the "consistent repeatable productivity" that anyone who fly fishes regularly strives for and someone who guides business is dependent upon

[Silver Creek]

[quote author=Duck-butt Chucker link=topic=3253.msg36661#msg36661 date=1281549584]

In terms of "Selective Feeding":


On some insect rich streams, the trout are fortunate enough to be
able to select from a sort of smorgasbord of food items. On other
waters, they never have that chance and take anything that is
offered. This also goes a long way to explaining why fish feeding
in a manner we have labeled as selective will break that pattern to
take other opportunistically offered frauds. Simply stated; what we
usually call selective feeding is not separate from opportunistic
feeding, it's part of opportunistic feeding. We should probably call
it selective focus."

[/quote]

I will disagree.

As I said, feeding is a population based phenomena. What you have described is a case of a fish that will break it's pattern of feeding and takes a different food type. We all know that this can occur during what we would call "selective" feeding. However, this does not mean that all fish that are feeding selectively can or will break their selective behavior. You have found a subset of in these feeding fish and ascribed their behavior to the whole group.

From that deduction, you have then moved onto the the hypothesis that selective feeding is just a form of opportunistic feeding, because some of the fish will take an opportunistic food during feeding on the most prevalent food source. I believe this is false reasoning. It is a form of fallacy called a hasty generalization. It is also called the Proof By Example Fallacy.

We also know that there are fish that will not break their behavior of selective feeding even though you offer them a larger food item they would normal take at other times. For example I've tossed a live grasshopper into the feeding lane of a selectively feeding trout eating PMD emergers and had the fish ignore the hopper time after time. I don't believe you can explain this behavior by saying this behavior is a form of opportunistic feeding.

I am of the belief that selective feeding is a behavior likened to obsessive compulsive disorder in humans, in that truly selective fish cannot break this behavior until the source of this obsessive compulsive feeding behavior is removed, e.g., the hatch dissipates.

My hypothesis of feeding as a population based activity in which fish exhibit different forms of feeding certainly is consistent with those fish that will break feeding on single item to feed on another. It also explains "selective' fish that will not break from feeding on a single item. I don't thing your interpretation of selectivity as a form of opportunistic feeding does so. What it does is try to redefine what most of us commonly understand selectivity to be and opportunistic to be, that is selective feeding is a subset of opportunistic feeding. By stating that the fish are opportunistically feeding on a single food item because that is all that is available, you say that is opportunistic and not selective. I believe that is not the common understanding of opportunistic vs selective feeding.

Logically, you are saying that selective feeding is a wholly contained subset of opportunistic feeding. I am saying that selective feeding and opportunistic feeding is are two separate sets which have an area of overlap. In your case, a Venn diagram would show the selective feeding as a small circle within the larger opportunistic feeding circle. In my case there would be two distinct circles with a area of overlap.

Using a Venn diagram, allows us to label the set(s) that define their behavior and allows us to easily see if they are a common set or not. Now logically, for selective feeding behavior to be wholly contained in the set of opportunistic feeding, they must all feed opportunistically; that is, all "selective" fish must also feed on all other foods that are available. I don't believe that to be the case; therefore, selective feeding is a separate set from opportunistic feeding.

[Duck-butt Chucker]

lol dude first off..when conveying a point try to make it as concise as possible so the reader is able to grasp whatever you're attempting to convey there's too much Venn Diagram this OCD that to extract whatever it is your trying to say. Second, this is not *my* interpretation on how trout behave as this is not *my* individual area of expertise as i've been fly fishing for merely 3 years and have never read a single book on the topic nor plan to...I simply chose to cite an alternative perspective on the topic I found interesting as I had this article saved in my favorites list (which also included this unrelated section) since I liked the assertions the guy who wrote it makes in regard to fly shape and color...I'll attach it below if you wish to read the full article. Lastly, the part of the post that I personally wrote and is based by my own logic and ration is the one pertaining to the value in knowing why a trout "takes" or "does not take" an offering...so if you want to write 6 pages to me about something which is *my* own interpretation based on *my* own logic and ration then I will be happy to respond...otherwise take it up with the guy who actually wrote the article cause I don't mean it in an offensive way but i'm really not that interested.

http://www.uky.edu/~agrdanny/flyfish/dryfly.htm