What do you do when are fish jumping, not biting?

[Vinny]

I took my 7 yr old daughter out to the Walla Walla river on Sunday. We just got one bite at the end of the afternoon.

1) The river was a little muddy (from rain the day prior).
2) There were a few steelhead jumping at 2 pm.
3) We were bobber fishing with shrimp.
4) We fished from noon until 3pm.
5) We were in the same spot where I caught a couple of steelhead last week.
6) The one bite was bottom fishing in a deeper slower pool.

What would you have done in these conditions to improve your odds of catching a fish?

Thanks in advance.

[ 10-29-2001: Message edited by: Vinny ]

[jet]

Go home... and sit in the hot tub. When they are jumping they are tough to hook.

Jet~~~

[Chris Nordling]

Vinny,

Try some other method of fishing. Depending on how stained the water was, you could have tried a number of things.

1) Fish a bobber and jig. Colors again depend on water clarity. Pink, red, black, orange.
2) Throw spinners,spoons or even plugs. The one's that aren't jumping may be agressive to their current holding area.
3) Change your position to the fish. Fish above or below the jumping fish. Sometimes just changing the angle of your bobber/shrimp rig will get a fish to bite. Try adjusting depth too.
4) Try to stick it out to a little closer to dark if you can. Some of my best steelheading is done in the last two hours of light. Especially in winter. Usually most species of fish move during these times as well as the rest of the low light hours.
If you didn't have any hardware or jigs, you could have also tried sizing down your shrimp to just tails or heads. Sometimes they only want a light snack.

Chris [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

~ Team U.S.A. ~

[ 10-29-2001: Message edited by: FWF1 ]