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2. Fly Fishing
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3. too-effective streamer

now i know why some fly anglers don't/won't use streamers: on Wednesday i wasted two fish that inhaled my mini buggers so deeply i couldn't remove them. the three fish that bit the bhpt were hooked every so delicately in the lip and we parted company quickly and painlessly, but the two for whom i dredged a small streamer weren't so lucky. i stopped fishing after the second.

what can i do to prevent this? in the case of bluegills, i just use a great big fly so they can't swallow it down so far, but trout?

Are you fishing barbless? Often trout are chasing yhe streamer so agressively they do get hooked deep into the mouth or even near the gills. If you are barbless the hook should come out easily but you will still kill an occassional fish.

Casey,

This isn't much help, but I understand where you're coming from. I posted a while back about accidentally hooking up with juvenile trout with flies that were a bit too big, and these were #10 or #12 scud hooks. While I don't know that I killed them, I didn't do them any good.

I've had flies inhaled before by a few types of fish, trout included, and I've resigned myself to not working too hard at getting the hook out. Rather, I clip the line, release the fish, and hope for the best. I tend to assume that I will do more damage rummaging around the trout's mouth / throat vs. getting him / her back in the water quickly. I know the hooks dissolve if they're left in the fish, but unfortunately, I don't know how quickly (or productive) this process is if the hook is too far down the fish's throat.

I think it's just the nature of the beast, but de-barbing the hook, as Matt suggested, has helped me out a lot in this arena.

Chris.

Hi Casey
I think thats part of fishing, I seem to kill more fish on beetles. I'm not sure it has to do about size, more how aggressive the fish are IMHO

John

I know it is a cliche but fishing is always going to be a blood sport.
We can only try our best to do as little harm as possible. If you really want to protect the trout yet still enjoy the pursuit, presentation, line management, etc just get a pair of diagonals and cut through the hook right at the start of the bend. Then you'll still feel the strike, or see the rise, but you won't be hooking, or hurting, them.

barbless, yes.
cut the line off, yes.
give up sooner trying to get the hook out--good idea.
cut the sharp part off--that was mentioned last year in a neat thread about "missed strikes" because of the possibility of counting fish we might otherwise not have landed. sounds pretty refined!

thanks for the suggestions, everyone. i guess the winter's daydreams didn't prepare me for the occasional disaster--odd how one's mind can shut out the dark side of an activity. i'll take the longer hemos today--and more smaller flies.

Native Americans didn't feel it was always necessary to kill an opponent in battle. If they merely touched the enemy, and survived, they felt they had proven their manliness. It was called "counting coup".

The method I described is derived from "counting coup".

That reminds me when I was a boy. We would tie string to grass-hopper and feed to small bass, they would fight like the dickens and out popped the hopper. Mind you one had to wait long enough for the bass to swallow the hopper.( seemed like a hour) :)

John

Jad,

That is a really cool story! When I was a young fly fisher, I mean like fifty two years ago!!! My buddy and I drove to PA as at that time I lived in NJ. Well anyway we wound up wanting to go fish the Brodheads near Mountain Top I think the town was called. We'd seen an article in Field & Stream. Well we hammered the browns in the very short public water stretch of river and we met another young guy like us and he told us he would take us to his house to get something cold to drink and then he would show us how to catch trout with his bare hands.

We were thinking like yea sure you can. But he took us to a very narrow little trickle, I wouldn't even call it a creek, it was no more than six feet wide and the deepest "pool" was maybe a foot. He would find a spot in the water with a couple of rocks that were leaning up against each other and he would put one hand at one end of the rocks and with his other hand he would insert it into the opening between the rocks and feel around for a fish. If he found one he would tell us to put our hands at the back end and he would then use both hands to get in between the rocks and extricate the prettiest looking wild brown trout that I had ever seen at that time.

They were not midgets either - as I remember them none were less than 10" and a couple were 12" long. It was the neatest trick I had ever seen. But he told us that besides trout he had also gotten hold of eels, water snakes, and a a couple of turtles had bitten him so I never had enough courage to try it myself.

I'll bet it would be neat to talk to him now-you know he"s a old man now like you and I.

Sorry about the Hi Jack

John