@tangledup what are you wearing when you fish these small spots? I tend to wear camo tops when I am fishing small trout creeks. Sometimes they see you and they're gone or too spooked to take anything that you throw at them. Other times they forget about you after 10 or 15 mins of no disturbance on your part and you can catch those fish. Also as you mentioned you can blow out a hole quickly. If you have made a couple or three casts that should have passed the fish especially if the fly line went over them, it might be best to move on. I am not as avid a fly fisherman as others on this thread. So mine are just observations form my own outings. If you dig through the Crane creek forum, Crane Creek redemption in 2014, I used a small portable turkey blind to get close to the creek without spooking the fish. I was fishing spin tackle using 2# Pline at that time, but shows what lengths I have used in the past to fool spooky fish.