Vince was Right

One of my angling heroes, the late Vince Marinaro, taught me a technique many years ago that enabled me to catch a large trout last week. From well downstream I saw him come up, but there was a hundred feet of good water between us so I marked his rise form well and gradually fished my way upstream taking a few small fish. He came up four more times, always at the same spot. There were many natural grasshoppers along the stream so I assumed these were what he was taking.
I drifted my Shenk’s Letort right over the spot of his rise form but he did not take it. Moments later he took another natural but he again refused mine. Twice more this happened…then I remembered Vince’s explanation of the simple, compound and complex rise forms some very large trout adapt. Maybe mine was using a “complex” rise form in which he simply drifted back 5 or 6 feet from his feeding station to take the naturals. On my next presentation I shot my Letort Hopper ten feet upstream of his rise forms…That did it and he took my Letort solidly.