Anyone that has cast a spinner for trout understands how trout respond to vibration. Not only do they react, they react violently. Now, they may not be doing it because they sense it as prey - but I think that is true of many streamer hits as well. Some of my favorite trout fishing of the season is hopper season. Much of the time, trout are keying in on feel, rather than eyesight, to find grasshoppers - or your fly - that fall into a stream. There are a number of streams I fish where you can watch trout move out of the undercut banks as soon as my hopper hits the water. The challenge is to wait for the strike.
We often fuss a lot over things fish can see and we assume fish care about - size, color, the amount of flash on a streamer, etc. However, we generally give less thought to the "acoustic profile" - or whatever you want to call it - of a fly. By acoustic profile, I mean how the fly affects a fish's lateral line. I think fishes are often feeling our flies or lures as often as they are seeing them. We struggle to understand this because it is not a sense we possess.
Fishes generally have three ways that they sense their environment: sight, smell/taste (chemoreception), and vibrations that are sensed by their lateral lines. Depending upon their environment, different senses will play different roles. Animals senses evolve to match their environment because brains are quite energy expensive. Evolution drives organisms to have one, maybe two strong senses. We humans have quite good eyesight but even that is somewhat limited compared to other animals. Many other animals (yes, humans are animals) see outside of the visual spectrum. Some animals - like cephalopods - lack the blindspot that we have. Many birds are able to sense - or see, if you prefer - ultraviolet light. Owls see at light levels humans are unable to. And Bald Eagles are able to see small animals moving miles away. Anyone that has owned a dog has a good understanding of just how limited our sense of smell is. And to bring it back to fish, we have all spooked fish while wading because they have an ability to sense pressure changes in their environment through their lateral line.
Water is a unique medium because it is dense and incompressible and sound travels through water more quickly than through air. It makes much sense that fishes rely upon their sense of feel. They live in an environment where sound is transmitted as pressure waves. This means that fishes have evolved to sense their world through feel as much as their other senses, maybe more.
If you have done much fishing in lakes, you have probably used a "fish finder" - a sonar or hydroacoustic device - is often used by lake anglers. In fact, forward-facing sonar is "changing the game" so much that the Wisconsin DNR had a question about outlawing it on this spring's conservation congress meetings. Sonar uses sound to sense changes in density - and fish gas (swim) bladders are significantly less dense than water.
We have seen other anglers are much more in tune with attracting fish than are fly anglers. Fly anglers often go for stealth, rather than trying to catch fish's attention and much of the time that works. But often, fishes are not looking for subtle, they are looking - or maybe more precisely - feeling for a stimulus. Think about some of the less than subtle lures out there - Jitterbugs, Tiny Torpedos and other prop baits, Whopper Ploppers, buzz baits, and other attention getters. A number of other lures also stimulate fishes lateral lines - crankbaits "wobble" is an attention getter as are the blades of a spinnerbait and the tails on many plastic baits. And in the trout fishing world, the inline spinner is the attention getter - much like a smaller version of the musky angler's bucktail lure. Datus Proper writes about catching trout on inline spinner in What the Trout Said,
The spinner was not food, but it provoked an aggressive reaction.
and I fully believe that based on my experiences fishing spinners. The hits are those of aggression.
In general, warmwater fly anglers seem to do more to invoke a fish's response to vibration than do trout anglers. Many flies have large, water-pushing heads - like Brad Bohen's Buford (above) - or have a wobble built into them like Tommy Lynch's Drunk and Disorderly (see below) or Andreas Andersson's Sid or mini Sid (also below). Saltwater anglers have long understood that getting fishes attention in a sea of baitfishes is important. Bass anglers use poppers and other attention-getting flies. And rattles and other noise-makers are more common in saltwater and warmwater flies than they are in trout streamers. Saltwater anglers have even created their own spoon flies, another fly with an inherent wobble. The closest I have seen on the warmwater side is Bill Sherer's Tongue Depressor, an excellent fly pattern with a lot of wobble.
Lynch's D&D and a number of other articulated flies have a wobble built into them that fishes can sense through their lateral line. The idea being that struggling baitfishes give off a similar wobble that predators recognize.
Andersson's Sid are tied on a 26 degree bent hook - the Ahrex TP650 - that helps give the fly a crankbait-like wobble. While both of these flies were developed for Smallmouth Bass, they are equally at home on trout streams and rivers.
For a longer, more detailed video: Villwock's The Roamer - A Streamer for All Species
Jake Villwock's fly, The Roamer, another fly developed for Smallmouth Bass, often incorporates a Bayou Rattler SoNaR Ballzz into the fly in addition to its water-pushing head.
Trout anglers seem much less likely to stimulate fish's lateral lines than other anglers. Though there are certainly ways that trout anglers catch fishes attention through their lateral lines. We may build rattles into flies and flies like the Muddler Minnow have a large, water-pushing head and a variety of larger streamer patterns have a significant acoustic profile. Streamers, generally being larger flies, give much greater opportunities for building an acoustic profile in to the fly.
Maybe the place that most trout anglers best understand the role that sound / vibrations make - other than when they spook trout - is in fishing terrestrials. Myself and others often tie foam terrestrials on a 1X heavy nymph hook so the fly makes a little more of a "plop" on the water. Too much commotion can sometimes backfire, particularly in low water. Some of my favorite fishing of the year are casting hoppers and beetles and watching fish trip over themselves to get at the fly. The takes are rarely subtle, particularly with grasshopper imitations. I am a big fan of moving my dry fly, which I think is another method that catches fishes attention, in part, through stimulating their lateral line.
One other place where making some noise makes a lot of sense is in stained water when fishes are less able to see your fly. In those conditions, they are more likely to use their other senses. This is a lot like how fishes that live in chronically turbid waters - many of the catfishes - have heightened senses of smell, another way fishes sense their environment.
Just something to think about...see if you can't work a little more sound / vibration into your flies and see if it works for you.
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