Bass Fishing

[zonker]

I think we often assume (at least I do) that every fish takes a fly/lure deeply into its mouth on the strike. Thus with barbless we assume that somehow the hook backed out of its holding spot. Watching a few of those bass showed me that sometimes they just kind of "lip" the lure, that is, they just grab the edge of it with their lip, carry it off, then swallow it. If that happened with a single hook fly it could easily be held flat between the fishes' lips so that when you set the hook, or the fish opens its mouth, the fly slips out without ever finding any meat with the barb. Lots of variables, for sure. Now if we could just figure out what causes all the fish in the lake to do the same thing at the same time (i.e., "short strike") we'd have it so figured out that it would be boring.

z~
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