Lesson 2. You Miss A Lot Of Strikes
Jeremy Hyatt, one of the top guides in Colorado, fished a nymph rig. I observed the fish inhaling the fly and spitting it back out like a sunflower seed. Hyatt never saw his indicator move and certainly never felt the fish. The perfect "dead drift," in which flies float with virtually no influence from the tippet and line, elicited more strikes, but the slack line caused more misses. Even the best anglers miss at least 50 percent of takes.

Just for grins, I suggested to my friend Anthony Bartkowski that he cast, mend the line and, once the drift was set up, count slowly to three, then set the hook. Sure enough, he got into a few trout that way. Next we tried a variation on the European style of nymphing. The angler uses heavily weighted flies, casts more directly upstream into the run, and essentially rakes the flies through the fish zone. I saw the fish eat the flies less often, but the percentage of hookups on takes improved.

I guess you have to pick your poison. A good compromise solution is to use that dead-drift technique but get in the habit of "mini-setting" the hook at the end of every drift. You'll be surprised how often you're buttoned on when you don't expect it.