17. How To Detect Strikes With A Euro Rig (17 of 20)

- [Tom] So George, how do you tell the difference between bottom and a strike, because they're both a hesitation, right? - [George] They're both a hesitation and to be honest with you, I think still the best anglers in the world are not able to always distinguish between the two. The big thing is having confidence in the way of your rig. If you have too much weight on there and you're constantly hitting bottom, you know for me, I like to hit bottom maybe, like, 2 or 3 out of very 10 presentations where I'm kind of snagging on the bottom. That seems to be a nice ratio. So when the fly does hit or hesitate, or the sighter hesitates, I know the set. But if my fly is snagging the bottom each and every time, I quickly lose confidence in setting the hook. - So that you hold the rod a little higher then? - Correct. And that's a great thing about with this technique is all you need to do is essentially your sighter, this colored piece of monofilament that we're using, we can use it as a depth gauge. So just kind of figure out how high or the angle your sighter's off the water and if you're snagging bottom on a regular basis, all you need to do is just basically hold it a little higher, just work in smaller increments. - Mm-hmm. Okay. So I noticed that as I'm watching your sighter, it is bouncing. I can see it kind of little hesitations, but you don't strike to those because it isn't a longer pause. Is that right? - Correct. And that's why I'm using a longer sighter and sometimes with these little tags. But one of the things you'll notice when you're drifting, when the flies are drifting on the bottom, your shot just literally just, or your shot or your flies are ticking along the bum, you'll see just like a nervous twitch. And often when you see that nervous twitch, hold tight for, you know, half a second to a second. That's usually an indicator that it's either stuck on the bottom or a fish has inhaled the fly. So I'm looking essentially for that nervous twitch to end. And again, that's why it's really important to get your weights kind of dialed in so you maintain that nice little ticking motion.