Other Than Casting

Now I am back fishing regularly I have other things to think about than casting. Things like, why aren’t I catching fish? Or, why do my knots fail? Stuff like that. Knots are a bone of contention, for years I used a grinner for everything but they started to be unreliable for some reason. I put it down to old tippet material so binned the lot and bought new but the breakages still happened so I have temporarily turned to the good old blood knot, it has reduced the number of breakages but I am still not fully happy with it. The main weakness with the grinner was the tippet to leader knot, that was where 90% of my breakages were, I now use tippet rings and blood knot both sides. I need (don’t we all) to have confidence in my knots, I tend to play fish hard. Anyway I now spend time on the internet looking for alternatives to try out.
On the why aren’t I catching fish front, it’s that time of year when the fish are just cruising around taking something, I assume buzzers, just under the surface, and bloody frustrating they were becoming. If I fished buzzers they were ignored or I might pick up the odd one on an amber nymph, but nothing consistent. I eventually found the answer by mistake. I put on a fly I use for fishing deep, it’s taken the vast majority of the fish I have caught this year. I felt it tick something on the delivery cast and didn’t see the plop of it landing, I thought I had broken it off and started a fast figure of eight retrieve to check it and suddenly found myself connected to a 3lb rainbow. Result. I has three more in quick succession in the time I had before I had to pack up. That last one was best, it was as far as I could cast and took it within a couple of seconds of the fly landing. I get a real buzz from hooking a fish at long range, there is something special in seeing a flash of silver over 80′ away and knowing you are attached to it.