Thank you, one and all, for managing to avoid combining the words "fish, spit, and hook" in more or less the same sentence. We are making progress. Really, truly, we are, and that means a lot.

I think the biggest reason that more spoon eaters aren't landed is the way the fish take the lure. Dec Hogan offers a fascinating summary (based on observations) of how steelhead take flies, and I think there is a lot in that summary that can be applied to all "swung" offerings.

Hooking fish well with your line/angle of presentation thirty degrees or less to the current is a notoriously hard thing to do. The fish tend to follow, eat, and turn, and when they bite something on a tight line hanging straight down or close to it, quite often it leaves their mouth before a hook can find decent purchase. I can't count the number of steelhead landed on swung offerings that were barely skin/lip hooked, and I have certainly lost and missed many more than that.

Sometimes the best thing you can do when you get whacked in the last third of your swim is to drop your tip and wait, giving the fish a chance to turn. Good luck with that though, it takes patience and calculation that defy nature . Chances are you'll get bit, yank back, sometimes theyll stick and sometimes they won't.

Fishing the Dolly Lama, a local favorite string leech of sorts, it is almost comical to leave the fly dangling in the current at the end of your swing and let it get attacked. Sometimes it will take upwards of nine or ten strikes to get a fish to stick, granted most of the suitors are small dollies which do have a hard time feeding themselves.

I think the hang back idea makes a lot of sense here, but have yet to try it on a spoon.