If a steelhead has a brain the size of a pea and can't remember that it ate a giant plastic pink worm yesterday, I have my doubts that it eats a dry fly today because it remembers eating floating caddis and mayflies as a pre-smolt some one or two years previous.

I think steelhead, like other fish, have archtypal or instinctive feeding behaviors. They pick things up in their mouths because they don't have fingers and opposable thumbs. If they think it's alive, they might smack it with their gill cover of side of body to stun it before circling around to pick it up in their mouth.

I've long wondered why steelhead exhibit feeding behavior when they are not actively feeding. I think they do like other animals, including humans, do. They repeat familiar patterns. They have been feeding since emerging from the gravel, so they continue to do so opportunistically. Adult steelhead pick up leaves, small sticks, and all kinds of flotsam in the water column. Fortunately for us, that includes bait, lures, and flies.

As for comeback strategy, I think it needs to satisfy two criteria: 1. make it easy; 2. appeal to the fish's curiosity. I first repeat the cast that rose the fish the first time. That has been the most successful action for me, and has resulted in raising steelhead up to 5 additional times after the first rise. If that doesn't work, I back up 20 - 25' and work my way back down to the point of the initial rise, sometimes with the same fly, sometimes with a smaller fly. (The smaller fly hypothesis goes like this: the fish can see well and obviously saw the first fly to which it rose. Make him work a little harder to see something slightly smaller and hopefully maintain his curiosity.) If that doesn't work, assume the fish's curiosity of the surface has waned, but maybe it will come back for a size 6, 8, or 10 wet Spade. This has worked, but less often than repeating whatever stimulated the initial rise. If none of these work I assume the fish is no longer curious, no longer a player, and move on. But if convenient I will return later, after a half hour, hour, or longer and see if it's a player then. And that has worked at least as often as repeating whatever produced the initial rise.

Regarding fish that rise repeatedly but don't get hooked: assuming we're not fishing the hangdown, which is an extremely difficult position from which to get a hookup, the fish is rising and hitting the fly, but not taking it in its mouth. Can't hook a fish that doesn't actually take the bait.

Sg