Sometimes those fish are just starving for a bare peice of metal!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: LoL, I'm sorry....I can't help it... 8)
The angler who is catches fish non stop with a bare hook, is not an angler, but rather someone who has become proficient at flossing/snagging fish.
I can only say this, and I will say it very carefully....There is an inherent danger in placing the too high a priority how many fish you catch compared to the guy next to you, especially in situations like the vedder these days, when the guy next to you is using questionable methods. The number of fish you catch in a day is not the determining factor of how much of a man you are, or whether you are a good fisherman or more importantly, whether you can be proud of yourself for who you are at the end of the day.
There is a choice you must make about the way you are going to fish. You alone must make that choice, you alone must defend it and live with it. There is a lot of information here, in books, and on other sites that will give you the knowledge required to become a skilled and responsible sportfisherman...or there are alternative ways to hook fish that you may choose to explore that might be easier, and allow more hookups, foul or otherwise....but that decision is one you should make...and live with.
If you want to know what is wrong with the flossing/snagging method, look up all the posts in here regarding that issue. Consider the negative impacts it has on fish stocks...
If you snag a nice wild coho, the numbers of which are in decline, and you release it and it dies an hour later because the hole in its belly allowed water to enter its body cavity and it drowned..or you catch a nice wild coho that was fair hooked and you release it safely and it lives to spawn and help preserve those stocks that are in decline...which scenario would you prefer? Which scenario would you feel proud and right to defend?
I am not saying it is easy to fish the responsible way if you want to "hook" as many fish as the flosser next to you, I am saying it is easy to fish the responsible way if you trully want to become more skilled at the sport of angling or tempting a fish to your line...and it will be so much more easy for you to feel good about yourself when the skills you learn begin to pay off, and year after year you begin to catch more and more fish...
There are many good posts all over the place in this forum that have excellent info on all the different variables involved in drift fishing. You can find them all here.
How people cut the yarn to look like a single egg....
how roe usually outfishes wool...
how a spinner can be deadly when everyone else is using the same thing...
how bottom bouncers can spook an entire pool in short order by ripping the float through the water nonstop...
how fishing away from the crowds can often find those spooked fish...
how giving the fish a rest and coming back to them later can counteract the spooked by snaggers factor...
how leader strength and diameter are related, how to short float roe above the heads of the fish so the nicer fish come up and strike...
How the coho tend to shy away from all the dirty old springs and the snaggers...
These ideas, theories and truths are all in here for the taking...but please do yourself a favor, don't feel you need to compare yourself with the flosser/snagger standing next to you...if his kid were standing next to him and he was teaching that child to hook fish in the ass, would you want to be compared to him then?
Don't get me wrong Thrasher, I'm not trying to jump on you here....I'm just saying be patient, do you homework...
read the stuff on this site....then ask questions about the things you don't quite get...
Nevermind the guy next to you...
rib