Spotting Fish

by Bob Luck
After spending yet another season missing almost all of the fish that were pointed out to me by my angling buddies, I decided that enough is enough: I have to learn how to spot them. It is pretty embarrassing that I can’t even find them as well as my wife, who has zero interest in fishing, and an eyeglass prescription that is so strong she can’t see the barn without glasses, let alone the door.
My first stop was YouTube.  Search “sight fishing” and you will find plenty of videos of hotshot anglers explaining their top tips for spotting trout, followed by a demonstration where they point to the river, enhance the scene for clueless viewers with an arrow pointing to a shadowy figure which may or may not look like a trout, then wade in and catch the fish which is usually enormous, especially if the narrator has a Kiwi accent.  I did pick up some useful, if obvious, tips such as “stand on higher ground”, “put the sun at your back” and “look for movement”.  After watching a half-dozen videos that all held pretty much the same half-dozen tips, I decided that YouTube had taken me as far as I was going to get.  I needed field practice.

November 28th, Black Friday, was clear and sunny, a perfect day for spotting fish.  After we finished our morning trash pickup on Hay Creek and the more responsible members of our crew headed home to do Christmas shopping or spend time with their families, I drove upstream to the easement on 325th Street, and put on my polarized glasses and an orange baseball hat (it was the last day of deer hunting season). I walked half a mile downstream, and slowly worked my way up.  In two hours, I saw fish in about 15 holes, the largest being about 12”.  Not nearly as well as my wife would do, but many more than I usually see. 
I was hoping to get some good photos and videos to share, but most of the fish I spotted were fleeing the scene.  The sunny skies and low clear water were ideal conditions for fish to spot people, and despite my efforts to move slowly and avoid casting shadows, they were not interested in modeling. I did manage to get a couple of videos that are inserted at the bottom of this post.  Hopefully you don’t need an arrow to find them, but if you need help, let me know.  If you have any fish-finding photos or videos that you would like to share, please let me know that, too!   We'd like to post them on our Instagram page, omitting any details you prefer not to share. You can email me at [email protected]

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