When do I set the hook — is it different for flies and spoons?
Completely different clocks. On a dry fly, the classic error is striking the instant you see the rise — the fish has taken the fly but not yet turned down, and you pull it straight out of an open mouth; the old "God save the Queen" pause of roughly a second lets the trout turn before you tighten. On nymphs, the opposite: set instantly on any hesitation of the indicator or leader, because a drifting nymph is inspected and ejected in a blink. On spinners and spoons there is usually no decision at all — the fish grabs moving metal and the moving line hooks it; just keep tension and sweep. Lake trout jigging is its own case: the take is often just weight appearing, so set on anything different.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about How it strikes
- What is the difference between a sipping rise and a slashing rise?
- Why do I get so many short strikes and bumped lures?
- Why do lake trout follow my lure all the way up without hitting?
- Why do trout takes feel like a tap — or like nothing at all?
- How do trout fight, and why do so many come off at the net?
Same topic, other species
- Why a sweep set instead of a bass-style hookset? — Crappie
- Why did the bite feel like dead weight instead of a hit? — Largemouth Bass
- A muskie just ate boat-side in the figure-8 — now what? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- Deadstick or jigging — which cadence actually catches perch? — Yellow Perch
- A pike followed my lure to the boat and just... left. Why, and what now? — Northern Pike
- Are smallmouth really harder fighters than largemouth, pound for pound? — Smallmouth Bass
- Why do walleye keep biting my minnow in half — and what is a stinger hook? — Walleye