Selectivity, educated fish and exact imitations in regards to fishing

[MOPanfisher]

No doubt that there are fish in any body of water that simply don't have to move much and actively hunt.  If I lived right next to a buffet of all my favorite foods why would I drive across the street to have the same thing.  Sometimes it's just something different or "wrong" about a lure that makes fish key on it.  I was walleye fishing with an old timer one time below Truman, throwing jigs till my arms were worn out, talking about they must not be there, he took a long drag on his swisher sweet and said, "they are there you just gotta have something he might eat, in front of his nose at that point he thinks he is hungry".  Actively feeding fish will be aggressive, what I call passive feeders are tougher.  Some days you are a hero, some days you are a zero. 

[Norm M]

11 hours ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

I wish I would have saved it and I've tried to find it again but can't.  It was a study of rainbow trout.  They stocked a pond with trout and fished for them.  The one's they caught were put in a nearby pond leaving the one's they couldn't catch in the first.  No matter how you tried catch the remaining fish in the first pond, including live bait, they simply wouldn't bite.  

They repeated the stocking several times with the same results.  But you could fish the second pond with fish that already been caught and catch them again and again.   

Also, there is a book by Leonard Wright called Fly Fishing Heresies where he states that as a kid an old guy would give him flies to use.  But he wanted them back if they caught fish, no matter how tore up they got.  He would use those tore up flies to modify his "perfect" patterns to imitate the tore up ones.  

I've been keeping old flies for years, especially dry flies.  You ever notice how the bite would shut off when you lost the fly they were biting on even though you put on a new one?  

 I went thru everything I had left from the American Fisheries Society and I did not find the study there. I have to dig thru my contact file and see who I have for the Illinois Natural History Survey . Then hope they have not been laid off by the state , which is a very real possibility these days .

[snagged in outlet 3]

For some reason I thought it was a study from a Ohio but I tried several times and never found it again.

[Norm M]

sorry for the confusion , I was referring to a study here in Illinois on a similar vein I referred to in one of my posts . should have quoted it instead .

 I plead lack of sleep . took a nice nap after seeing a Doc and catching up on the chores . The fog has been lifted .