Not So Perfect

so far this year, i've been out fishing 3 times, and still haven't caught my first fish.  i've been trying to fly fish for white perch, but those buggers are getting the best of me.  i start fishing about 30 minutes prior to sundown, and the timing is great because they really get going, starting to feed in shallow water.  the fish are nearly 'boiling' around me, with swirls less than 10 feet away.  yet, i can't get any bites.  i've tried a plethora of flies, including clousers (almost every color possible), shrimp flies, dry flies, woolly buggers, and even Prater's Hushpuppy nymph on a variety of setups, but i got hardly a nibble. i don't think they're on bait because i am not seeing the typical spray out of the water.  for some reason, i think they're eating the insects on top that have recently hatched, but i'm not sure.  any ideas?

however, i nearly caught one with the Hushpuppy, and had it almost in hand but it came off literally a foot away.  some people might say that it was a 'caught' fish, but unless i can take a picture of it, i don't count it.  the loss was completely angler error.  i didn't perform a good hook set, so i have only myself to blame.  i find myself not very good at strip setting the hook because half the time i'm surprised that i have something on the end of my line, so in a state of disbelief, i usually forget. 

anyways, i've heard reports that schoolie stripers are around, so i'm preparing to go inshore fishing.  i've been tying some leaders, but the one thing that pisses me off about not using store bought tapered leaders is that when i make a poor cast, and get the tailing loop...the leader gets tangled around my knots' tag ends.  then i spend about 15 minutes trying to untangle the leader only to find out that i made it worse because the leader was not in fact tangled or knotted, but only hung up on the tag ends.  argh.  am i the only one where this happens?

so i tried creating a whipped loop rather than using a perfection loop just to reduce the amount of tag ends, but it just doesn't work well on mono.  so i ended up thread wrapping my perfection loops in order to create smooth taper, and it seems decently strong.  they're ugly, not perfect, but strong.  we'll see.