In these small and intimate quarters, the geography of the pool became distinct and precise. But, as the hours dragged on, I became aware that most of the rises did NOT occur randomly in the pool, but in fact 80% of the rises were in just four or five locations, often several minutes apart, but exactly there, again. If one cast to that spot, nothing, but minutes later, exactly there, a rise again. One grass hummock was most notable. The rise would always occur six inches to the right of the hummock by a distinctive dark and maroon-sided fish moving from right to left. Casting ahead of the fish consistently failed, even when I was sure it was passing under my fly after a visible rise. But time and again, minutes apart, that same fish would nose up exactly six inches to the right of the hummock. From a distance of 50 feet on the wind riffled water, we could not see what was being taken, but the hatch was clearly mixed, sparse, and irregular. The question rose in my mind, how could there always be a fly, right there, when the fish came by? The wind was blowing from our backs, swinging our floating lines eventually to a straight downwind direction. Finally I scooted myself laterally to a position directly upwind of the hummock, cast the little Adams on a long, thin leader exactly to that taking point and just waited. If the wind direction shifted slightly so the fly drifted 6 inches from the taking point, the fish eventually rose to something right where my fly should have been. In frustration I determined that I would keep the fly right in that spot so that the fish would have to literally nose it aside to take something else. I began concentrating on keeping the fly right in the taking point, hanging it in the wind drift on a straight and theoretically tight line. It wasn't that hard, the line length being constant and easily controllable. If the fly began drifting laterally from a wind shift, I re-cast to position the fly exactly or scooted myself laterally to drift it back. Three minutes later the fish sipped up to MY fly. After landing the 19 inch maroon-sided rainbow, I immediately repeated the process successfully on the next two most frequented taking points in the pool. My partners were furious. Subtracting the time to fight and release fish, I was hooking a fish every three minutes or so. They both changed to #18 Adams and let their flies hang in the wind drift randomly about the pool. They caught nothing. It was apparently not the fly, but WHERE exactly the fly was that determined whether a fish would rise to it or not. I found the implications of the afternoon amazing. That some cruising fish would settle into a very precise and specific cruise pattern was an interesting and important fact to remember, but not especially new. That there were only a finite number of specific points in that circuit where they would rise, and that they would take a fly at that point that they would ignore elsewhere, was astounding. I didn't really believe it.
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