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Column: How to think like a fish

Great Outdoors like James Murray
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As my father used to say,”If you want to catch a fish, you have to think like a fish.”

While that perhaps may have been somewhat of a slight over simplification, he wasn’t really all that far off the mark. Quite simply, if you can figure out where the fish are and what they are feeding on, you are that much closer to catching them.

Not that a certain amount of ichthyology, entomology, physics and a few other sciences, not to mention proper gear and technology, don’t enter into the process.

The point is that you have to find the fish before you can catch them. Before I even head out in the boat, I take a close look for insects on and around the shore line. Once out on the water, I look to see if there is any sort of insect hatch coming off, or at least spent insect casings floating on the surface. I then look in my fly boxes to see if I have something close or similar. It’s called matching the hatch. I then search for areas where there is natural protective cover for both insects and fish such as weed beds, sunken islands and along the drop-off. These are places where you will likely find a number of fish just hanging around – fish that just might feel confident enough to venture out from their protective cover to go after something to eat. After that, it’s pretty much a question of presentation.

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Angling for fish in streams and rivers isn’t that much different. Fish in moving water spend most of their time either holding along seams where there is less current to fight, or behind large rocks and in deep pools waiting for food to come floating their way. Whether fly fishing, casting a lure or floating bait, the trick is to pass your presentation through their sight line and feeding zone.

All I know is there is nothing like watching a fish rise to the surface to sip in a dry fly, or the sudden take of a trout that was waiting beneath the shadow of an overhanging branch on the other side of a fast flowing stream.

When it comes right down to it, having an understanding of the feeding habits of fish and the subaquatic environment in which they live is sort of like being able to think like a fish.

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