Catch Rate
 

I fly fished for a short time before my shoulder injury became a problem. And i noticed what i wrote about below too when i fished. So here goes.

The last few times ive been out with my ultra lite with spinners on there has been a few fly guys close by. I notice the rate at which they hook fish is about the same as the spinning rod but and here is the question: the fly guys fish seem to get off very quickly before getting even to shore way more often than guys with spinning rods. Is it smaller hooks or just not getting the feel or? not stripping in fast enough?
Or is this just newbies or thats just the norm with fly fishing setups and if so anyone care to suggest why?

Im not being a smart a--. Seriously ive kinda been wondering this for quite a while. Had a guy yesterday who got me thinking on this again. He seemed to be very experienced. He hooked quite a few more fish than i but i got mine to shore for release way more even. I didnt ask him as i didnt want to seem like i was rubbing it in and i didnt know him. So any answers would be great to satisfy my curious mind.

Guess I will start with the disclaimer that I am new to fly fishing but I guess I would ask if your spinners still have the stock barbed trebles?

I would think a single tiny hook barbless or not would always loose to a treble.

I know personally I am using small nymphs and with that smaller wire of the hook itself is easier to straighten hooks or just to pull them out of the fish since there would be less metal in the flesh.

I have also lost fish, fly fishing simply due to my experience level.


On the other hand if the guy was fishing larger streamers then my hypothesis is out the window.

Sorry yes i should have mentioned i use single hooks no barb. But thanks for your answer. I would love to get to the bottom of this. I would think it should not be much different but as i say when i fly fished i had far less stay on too. Very frustrating actually.

There's multiple factors . Fly rods are a lot more forgiving(flexible) when a fish bites the fly, sometimes the flexibility absorbs the hook set. Which in turn just pokes the mouth and doesn't penetrate fully. Seen this many times using fiberglass fly rods versus a carbon graphite (stiffer)

I agree with the OP and there are a number of reasons for this. Here's an example.

When you are spin fishing with spoons, spinners, crankbaits etc you are imitating bait fish swimming through the water. With this presentation the line strength used is not very important. When i used to spin fish i basically used 10 lb line everywhere i fished. For the vast majority of Alberta fish 10 lb line is more than enough to handle them even with a strong current on a river. Combine this with a general all purpose rod which most spin fishermen use then you should be able to overpower most fish to shore.

In fly fishing the line strength and line diameter is more important. When fishing dry flies or nymphing the line used (tippet) needs to compliment the flies weight to achieve a natural presentation. Because of this guys will fish 3x,4x,5x,6x and sometimes 7x tippet (the break strength ranges from 8lb to 2.5lb). In addition on a typical fly leader you will have different lines of different strengths tapering downward, the knots used to tie these lines together will reduce the line strength even more. Now lets not forget about the hook sizes. Imitation for many of the bugs in water are tied on 20x hooks or smaller, which is much smaller than any hook I've seen spin fishing, with small hooks it becomes more difficult making a good hook set and keeping it set. And finally combine this with a light fly rod then the fly fishermen loses a lot advantage over the fish. The fly fishermen has to slowly play the fish delicately to avoid break offs. When the fish has more time in the water to move around, jump, shake the likeness of it unsetting the hook and getting away is much higher.

Of course the scenario I illustrated is just a hypothetical example of why just to make a point clear. Some if not all of the cases described will become a factor when fly fishing.

You are probably thinking why would someone would want to use a fly rod over a spinning rod. In many cases a fly setup will out fish a spin setup and vice versa. It really depends on the situation and the species. I feel fly fishing is more about the process than the result and for me personally I've had a lot more success fly fishing for Salmonidae than using spinning gear.

Angler competence / incompetence would really be the only reason there might be a significant difference in catch rates. Truth is most fly anglers are not that good at it,,, most of them have far more experience with spinning gear having grown up with spinning rods in their hands.

Fighting fish is all about rod angles and pressure. Most spinning rods are 2-3 feet shorter than the typical 9 foot fly rod. A shorter rod will put more pressure on a fish compared to a longer rod held at the same angle. If you held a 9 foot spinning rod vertically above your head like many flyfishers do, you would lose a lot of fish as well!!!

A fly angler who knows how to use lower rod angles to his advantage and how much pressure you can really put on your tippit will not lose that many fish comparative to other gear.

Thanks for the replies. Great answers. Curiosity satisfied.
I kind of guessed some of it. Just had to hear someone else say it as i wasnt to sure of myself on this.

So when u spin fishing u r cranking a reel at a steady speed. So when ur fly fishing ur stripping a fly ur pausing or swinging flys or dead drifting a fly, the fish can hit fly partially and not get a good hook set. Cranking a spin reel is moving at constant speed making for a easier hook set. A seasoned fly flyfisher man doesn't loose the amount of fish that a rookie will

Doing both myself i think that spin gear because its imitating a fish they hit harder because a fish is harder to kill. Where as for the most part flies arent taken with the same amount of energy.

I agree with fish man and another factor maybe weighted flies a trick to not loose so many fish is to use an unweighted fly this way the fish can't shake loose as easy as compared to bead headed flies or even worse coneheaded, also it depends on the species I challenge any spin fisherman to stand beside me and keep up in catch rates with grayling , whitefish, and trout in rivers. But if it was walleye yea I'd lose ... Not pike tho lol.

Agree with you about catch rates :)
I would also add walleye on the fly rod but I'm not proud. I'll stick a jig on the end and a minnow and still use the fly rod..and still out fish and our hook spin casters. I'm not knocking spin casting either because I use all techniques. I just prefer the way a fly rod can present to the fish and the catch rates that comes with that.

Never thought of the above. Glad i started this thread im learning lots.

So question: Probably a obvious answer but,instead of using bead heads do you use a split shot further up the line then? Or?

I would love to some how see data on this, detailing the presentation of a non-weighted fly vs a weighted fly, and compare that to the hook up numbers when the fish are at specific depths. I currently would rather use a weighted fly than put split shot between my flies on my line somewhere when I need to get deeper or am in stronger current.

Then would need compare the number of the fish that are landed because of the fishes ability to shake the extra mass of a weighted fly. The problem is, that you would never REALLY know why the fish got off.

Personally I would think that any advantage of landing fish on non weighted flies would be insignificant if you were fishing barbed flies.

Its neat to think about though and might lead to be adding more non weighted flies to my setups just to see what happens.

its just that a fly is going to be able to swing around a lot more when the first shakes their head with a weighted fly especially if the weight is on the opposite end of the hook. So the less amount of weight attached to the fly the better but yea casting split shot sucks so there is fine balance I beleive