The Troutbitten Podcast is available everywhere that you listen to your podcasts.
** Note ** The Podcast Player, along with links to your favorite players is below.
Season fourteen is a ten-part Troutbitten Skill Series, all about Streamer Presentations. We’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time.
We spend a lot of our time dead drifting dry flies and nymphs. But with streamers, we’re trying to make them look alive. Instead of no motion, we move the fly. And this is exactly why we love to fish streamers. Because we get tired of dead drifting. And we love to think about everything we can do with a streamer to make a trout eat the fly.
A lot of angler say that streamer fishing is salesmanship. That’s a great description of the process, because we need to convince the fish that what we’re offering is worth the effort.
But how do we sell it? What are the animations? What are the things we can do with a long fly, to make it look like a baitfish, like a crayfish, a sculpin, maybe a small trout or a fall fish?
This Skills Series will highlight a number of these ways to move the fly. We’ll talk about the Jerk Strip, the Head Flip, Jigging, Speed Leads, Lane Changes, the Crossover Technique, Swinging, Drifting, Gliding, Sliding and more, with dedicated episodes for each.
But, what can we control? Within all of those different presentations, what are the elements that make up a Head Flip, for example? How deep is a streamer during a slow slide? How fast is it going during a Speed Lead? While swinging or drifting, what elements can we adjust and which ones are actually out of our control.
Covering those elements is our goal with this first episode on Streamer Presentations. We’re here to put some details around the things we can control on a streamer.
- Head Position (the direction of the fly)
- Depth
- Speed
- And whether we’re holding one seam or crossing seams
Notably, we won’t talk much in this series about flies or even lines and leaders. Because the point is, you can get these motions, these presentations on a wide variety of lines — sinking line, floating line or a Mono Rig. You can use short leaders, long leaders, poly leaders or standard. You can fish it all. But the real question with streamers . . . is how do you want the fly to move?
The joy of streamer fishing is that everything works sometimes. Trout respond to many kinds of presentations out there, and trying to dial that in is a fun way to spend your day.
Here we go . . .
Resources
READ: Troutbitten | Category | Streamers
READ: Troutbitten | Streamer Presentations — Jigs, Jerks and Strips
PODCAST: Troutbitten | Streamer Presentations — All About the Head of the Fly
Listen with the player above, or . . .
Find the Troutbitten podcast on any of these services:
— Apple Podcasts
— Spotify
— Google Podcasts
— Amazon Music
. . . and everywhere else where you listen to podcasts.
You can find the dedicated Troutbitten Podcast page at . . .
Season Fourteen of the Troutbitten Podcast continues next week. So look for episode two your Troutbitten podcast feed.
Fish hard, friends.
** Donate ** If you enjoy this podcast, please consider a donation. Your support is what keeps this Troutbitten project funded. Scroll below to find the Donate Button. And thank you.
Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
I’m so stoked for this skill series. I never spend the time on streamers that I should to learn the techniques. Hopefully this will be the kick in the pants to get me to do it.
Right on
If I use a Mepps is it still fly fishing?
Nope! LOL. Get with the program!
Looking forward to this series.
Do you prefer to weight the streamer or use split shot to get depth?
Do you carry streamers in different weights?
Thanks for keeping us always looking to consider something new on the stream.
Dom, are you using primarily a clinch knot on streamers? I’ve fooled around with loop knots, knowing that Galloup uses them. But his rig is different, with sinking lines and slower and deeper water along banks, I think. My issue with loop knots is they uses more tippet and are longer to tie, but I’ll use them more if it makes a real difference. My general feeling is that the difference is lost on streamers becaue of the extra weight of streamers that helps animate the fly. Cheers, Toney
Hi Toney. I use a Davy most often, because it saves even more material and time. I agree with you about loop knots. I rarely use loop knots to streamers. I think it’s unnecessary. In my opinion, it only matters if you’re using something thicker than about .010″ for tippet.
If I do want to use a loop knot, I tie one to the fly with stout tippet. Then I clip it off above the knot and leave it there forever. Then I can just tie a Davy or Clinch into the loop when changing flies.
Make sense?
Dom
Thanks. Tying a loop knot as a permanent knot sounds very interesting. I’ll have to remember that hack! Cheers.