You have probably seen plenty of ads for stuff on the web that, when you click thru, you end up on a pretty cheesy site. For some reason, I clicked on a link to a site that promised to tell me everything I needed to know about trout fishing. Being bored, I started to read thru the narrative advertising the book, scanned the endorsements and eventually said to myself, “what the heck, I’ll try it and then let folks know what I found.”
Well, I found a treasure. This is a well written, 93 page ebook titled “How to Catch a Trout Every Time” by Nick Anikijenko.
It covers the different types of trout and their characteristics, behavior, environment, locating, presentation, stalking, dress, equipment and a number of other subjects. In addition, this is the first trout book I have ever seen that covers spin fishing.
One tidbit among the many you will find in this book is that we stink. More specifically, your lures stink. It is very easy to transfer human smells to your lure just by tying it onto your line. Did you fill up your truck before heading to the river? Chances are that you have some fine, robust gasoline smells lingering on your fingers that are waiting to destroy your first few hours on the stream.
The real proof of this is right in front of us. Just go to any fishing store, and you will see any number of different concoctions that you can slather on your lure to attract fish. In fact, many fishing regulations specifically address when and where you can use scents. Must be true that trout have pretty good sniffers.
The key point is that while we may think about adding some smells on purpose, we never think about the smells that sneak into the equation – the unintentional scent mark. Nick’s tip is that we have to recognize this situation and take action before we set ourselves up for failure. Do you put insect repellant on? mmmm. DEET is probably a great attractant. How about suntan lotion? Geez, I never really paid this much attention before.
After you gear up at the trailhead, grab a handful of dirt and grind it in, wash your hands in the stream, grab some slime; in other words, make an effort to remove the human, the artificial, from you so you do not transfer this to the lure and trigger a rejection reaction instead of a strike.
Nick has tons of other great info in this book. Fly fisherman can just ignore the stuff on spinning just as spinfishermen have ignored all the fly stuff that is in most trout books. Instead, focus on the core message of this book – simple things you can do that will increase the probability of success.
Unless stated otherwise, this article was authored by Steve Moore