Are trout just plain stupid?

[Chris Shelton]

You know, I get so irritated when fish don't play the game according to the rules! I was fishing a egg sucking leech on the weekend, and my logic tells me that a leech sucking on a egg is going to be doing this at it's leisure, and certainly not in hot pursuit of the egg! Have any of you ever seen an egg trying to escape from a predator? My point exactly! So, applying this train of thought made me opt for the dead slow approach, right on the bottom. For more than an hour I persisted with not so much as a bump. In frustration, I hastened to retrieve my fly for the inevitable fly change. Lo and behold, a fish grabbed it! Two casts later I was into another lively trout on a quicker retrieve. My conclusion was that the fly was not really imitating a leech sucking on a egg at all, or at least the trout did not think so! All I was doing with the quicker retrieve was basically transform the fly into an attractor of sorts. Now I ask you with tears in my eyes, what is the point of going to such great pains to imitate a natural so faithfully, and fishing it the way that we know the natural would perform, if the fish are going to be so damn stupid as to mistake it for something else at the end of the day?

[Herman Jooste]

Interesting thread Chris.
I actually think it's us humans who are just plain stooopid We have the audacity to presume that we know exactly how a fish "see's" a certain food source, we then spend hours dreaming up and tying what we perceive to be the exact imitation, and then get extremely p*ssed off when the fish ignore it! In exasperation we go back to "old faithfull" , which all the accumulated knowledge of centuries of fly fishing tells us WILL NOT WORK under the present conditions ( time of year, time of day, what is or isn't hatching etc.) and what happens, the fish can't resit it.
That's just part of what makes our sport and hobby such a great one

[Hanno]

Are trout plain stupid?

YES!

That is why it is one of our favorite fish... any dumb newbie like myself catches them...

I tried to be a tradionalist, only food flies etc... and find I catch trout best by stripping nymph patterns in at speeds no nymph could dream to achieve.

So it is all agression for me, which is very unsatisfying. Yesterday persisted with slow nymph retrieves with a Walker's nymph and caught a frog!

[Herman Jooste]

Are trout plain stupid?

Yesterday persisted with slow nymph retrieves with a Walker's nymph and caught a frog!

Chalk up another entry on your freshwater species list

[chriss]

Well this might exactly be why fishing for trout is so different and difficult at times. When I find a fly in the box, that I think matches what the fish is feeding on, I always try different retrieves. One thing I learned is that trout might not be so stupid, but just not interested at the time. You need to convince them and for us the fisherman it is frustrating like hell!

[Chris Shelton]

I may be the stoopid one afterall, but I am conviced that stocked stillwater trout are even more stoooooopid. I simply refuse to give a really stupid fish any more credit than it is worth.

To back this statement up I will leave you with the following example; You try slapping a fly on the surface on a stream and see what happens. 9 times out of 10 you will put the fish down, not so? Why,...well you see, those fish are damn clever! As for their stupid stillwater cousins I shake my head sometimes. Let me relate the following incident. I was carefully fishing the fringes of a popular dam with my little buzzers and things one day, applying lots of thought as I fished, confident to outfish the Mrs Simpson brigade with my 'more' perfect presentations. My so called 'perfect' approach was shattered when a chap arrived and proceeded to thrash the water to shreds with a multiple rig of splitshot all the way up his line. On the point of his line was a simple DDD. The splitshot sounded like a gattling gun as it hit the surface which served to draw the trout in from all quarters. This guy simply could not go wrong and was into one fish after the next! I refused to resort to this kind of fishing and left in disgust......ego completely shattered! I simply refuse to be outwitted by such stupid fish and will rather have no part in that kind of bafoonery!

[Herman Jooste]

Bwaahhaaaa, a nice description Chris. There again in stocked stillwaters perhaps the sound of multiple split shot hitting the water sound like pellets being thrown in and the DDD being dragged under resembles a pellet? It would appear that stocked stillwater trout have no need to look for your brilliant natural imitations.! They could also be so spoilt (dumb?) that they don't even recognise them as a food source

[Chris Shelton]

That is exactly what it resembled Herman......flipping stooooopid pellot induced gluttons is what I say They give trout a bad name!

[Herman Jooste]

That is exactly what it resembled Herman......flipping stooooopid pellot induced gluttons is what I say They give trout a bad name!

Maybe pellet fed fish should be reclassified, how about pellotus dumbassus ??

[chriss]

... They give trout a bad name!

Haha ! Sounds like a Bon Jovi song