I think "totally rubbish" was a bit strong.
Gary W:
I apologise. That remark was not directed at you or anyone else. It was written as a shock response to something i firmly believe is wrong. They may have experienced otherwise. Saying that, and this is going to sound bad :devil:
My experiences, on the rivers over the years shows that many say they dead drift but in reality actually don't. This gives us a fly that behaves differently to either a swung fly or a true dead drifted fly.
Also, if a fish attacks your hook, misses, turns and hooks itself anywhere other than the mouth, that fish is considrered to be foul hooked. Most decent anglers that I know would return a fish taken in this manner.
I return 99.9% of all my fish, whether game/coarse or sea. What i'm refering to is the process of an actual take, and the fish pricking itself with the hook whilst rejecting the fly. I:e still hooking itself in the mouth.
You rarely in my experience get take information from the hook hold whilst dead drifting as opposed to swinging through a lie. And this in turn must mean a fish has made a rational choice to take a dead drifted fly. A swung fly will only be in the window of opportunity for a fraction of the time, and when seen, will or hopefully trigger a response.
Most times in fact, and i'm referring here to atlantics, i'll dead drift a pattern along the lie path, and then apply tension creating a swing across the fishes nose. This is a good method. In my experience, across many species, i've only ever foul hooked a very, very low percentage of fish. Bass are the worse, as they smash the fly with whatever is available. Flank, gill covers, tail, etc are all the same to bass, but again, rarely does the dead drift fly foul fish. It sort of just gets batted around.
I've heard on here that steelhead prefer a sub current speed presentation, but you can still use a dead drift to set up the final assault.
The possibilities are endless, and slack line, slack fly presentations, whilst not always in vogue, should i think be tried much more often, especially when all else fails.