Watch the surface during a hatch and you'll see bugs collecting in narrow streaming lines instead of dispersing evenly. These are feeding lanes — the way current splits around structure, slows over a depth change, or merges below a tributary creates predictable corridors that funnel drifting food.
Active fish position 6–12 inches off a feeding lane, just inside the slack water of an adjacent seam. They flicker out, eat, and slide back. A drift through the lane catches fish; one foot off catches nothing.
Reading feeding lanes is the difference between fishing the right zone and fishing the right line.