Obsessed,

Here's where the mystery of the Fraser to me comes into play. The first hour or so that I fished, I was using a 1 oz. bank sinker instead of the 2 or 3 oz. Bouncing betty. I could cast just as far as everyone else, but my drift was much faster, about as fast as I normally like my presentations to travel when I'm drifting. A tap on the bottom every 2 feet or so. I didn't hook a thing, even though I too had an extremely long leader tied on (about 8').

The guy fishing next to me was hooking a fish on just about every cast, so I asked him what I was doing wrong. He said I wasn't using near enough weight, and that my drift was much too fast. I proceeded to put on a 2 oz. Betty, and lo and behold, a couple of casts later, I had my first fish! The main thing I noticed was that my gear was dredging along the bottom MUCH slower than I prefer to drift fish. At this speed, logic would dictate that the leader was preceding the weight downstream at probably near a 90 degree angle, not perpendicular to the current which would facililtate the long leader being swept into the fish's mouth more easily.

So, even though the water only had about a foot of visibility, the slower drift speed may have given the fish a better chance of seeing the offering. Color also seemed to make somewhat of a difference. As an experiment, I switched around from red to pink, and finally charteuse. The chartreuse for some reason seemed to work better?

Odds are that the Fraser fishery probably is the flossfest that it has been dubbed, but the circumstances under which I was hooking the most fish led me to believe that it was a distinct possibility that these fish were actually biting.