Setting the Hook With Floating Flies

Ken Allen writes in the the Portland Press Herald about the most effective techniques for setting the hook with small floating flies, noting that fish often take and spit a fly faster than most anglers are prepared for.  “To set the hook with a size 24 fly, the hook must be ultra-sharp and the strike paradoxically crisp but ever so gentle — a tactic best described by an image. Fly rodders pretend the hook has snagged onto a spider-web strand, and they want to tighten the line quickly without breaking the web.”