** The Q&A series on Troutbitten is an effort to answer some of the most common questions I receive.
The latest question and answer, along with a Riverside video reading of this article, appears below. **

I’ve fished more streamers-only trips in the last few months than I have in a very long time. My obsession began back in October, and it has now carried into later winter. Streamers are not only my primary option — I often take no other patterns.

Fly fishing offers us options to effectively present every food form that trout eat, from the surface to the riverbed, on dead drifts or with swift strips. And I’ve watched long term angler go in and out of phases that are focused on fishing one way, aiming to improve one style for months, seasons or years at a time. That’s where I am now — back into a streamer phase. And it’s been rewarding.

We’re also right in the middle of our Streamer Presentations Skill Series on the Troutbitten Podcast, and as is my habit, I tend to fish through our topic. I’m fortunate to spend most days on the water, so I have the luxury of testing and tweaking more than worrying much about how many trout find the net.

But this dedicated time for streamers has provided a singular focus, enough to learn some new things and re-learn some old things. The last time I put this many streamer months together was seventeen years ago, when I did it for almost a year. Those daily trips with streamers advanced my understanding of the possibilities. A new baseline was set, and I’ve been working from that ever since.

With all this focus on the long flies, it’s no coincidence that I’ve received more questions about streamers than anything else. And here’s one that is most common. I think it’s a great question that leads us into some planning and an understanding of our whole process.

Article version appears below the video . . .

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Question

This question comes from Cody Mulan, through email.

Hi Domenick. I’m following along with your latest podcast about streamers, and I’ve been reading through your (streamer) category on the website. This is good work. Here’s one question that keeps coming to mind — when do you change the streamer? I’ve heard many theories on this. Everyone seems to have their own system. So I’m curious, given all the other stuff you write and talk about, when do YOU change the streamer?

Answer

Thanks, Cody. You hit on an important point — everyone has their own method. And as long as you have a plan and a reason to change, then it’s probably just as good as mine.

I have a lot more to change about how I present the streamer before I actually clip off and change the fly. You’ve heard us talk on the podcast about all these various movements and animations to build into a presentation. So I usually work through a handful of those variables, give each of them a fair shot, and then change flies.

What’s a fair shot? It might be faster than you think . . .

Today, the streamer bite was pretty good, and activity mostly came from soft water near structure, but with decent flow nearby and some depth. It’s been like this for many days this winter, so it was no surprise. I caught five trout in about an hour, and I had clear hits on at least four more. I consider that fast action for streamers. So I had good, positive feedback for where trout were feeding. But for the next twenty minutes or so, I had no action. Something had changed, and I needed to adapt.

I’d had most of my success on a low Crossover style presentation, with slight twitches mixed in with lane changes and stalls around rocks and other structure. But everything had been low and very targeted when I’d had success. Toward the end of those twenty minutes, I started experimenting with the same fly – a simple variation of George’s Sculp Snack. I mixed in Head Flips and long slides that carried the streamer out of the strike zone and generally moved the fly higher and further. One swipe from a decent brown in some mixed pocket water got me thinking, and I decided to make a change.

I swapped out to a Half Pint. It was the same size fly, but with much less weight included on the hook. So the drop rate was slower. And in the same water, I could do very different things with the fly because it didn’t fall as quickly when I backed off the tension.

Two trout came to the Half Pint before that minor success ran out too. And about fifteen to twenty minutes later, I took a walk to some slower water. I downsized the streamer and reintroduced the Crossover, trying to rekindle success. Then I caught four more trout in the next hour and a half before I left to pick up Joey from school.

Possibilities

That’s an example of how I adapted, just this morning, without thinking too much about it. I’ll reiterate that, with each fly, I ran multiple different tactics.

So when do I change the fly? When it’s not working — but when I’ve also exhausted the possibilities of that fly, or I’ve at least run through its strongest qualities. I also test multiple water types before changing flies. And most often, I probe different depths.

Sometimes I change for more size, more flash or other related qualities. But most often, I change for drop rate, because I believe that how much a fly sinks is its most important quality. But other times, I simply add split shot to a fly that’s taking fish, if I want it to ride it deeper.

I mentioned the marker of twenty minutes. That’s about the longest I’ll fish a streamer without success. If I have something working, I’ll fish it all day, if the trout stay on it, but after about twenty minutes of no response, I start looking for the next change.

That’s part of my system. I know that others rotate through colors, and I’ll do that some days — but I do it together with the drop rate. So, I might choose a heavy fly for low rides with subtle animation, and if I’m coming off a lighter fly with what I call a Tight Line Dance, then I might also drastically change the color (from dark to light) if nothing was working.

Flash seems more important than color. And I’d probably be happy enough with a box full of olive streamers in various shapes, weights and differing amounts of built-in flash — more or less shiny stuff seems to make a big difference.

For me, fly fishing is all about all the options we have on the water. It’s about making changes. And even while I’ve been dedicated to streamers as a primary option, there’s a whole world of rigs, presentation styles and, yes, flies that might suit the moment.

Enough experience with your own system ultimately merges into instinct. Eventually, there’s a nagging feeling that things could be better by clipping off one and tying on another.

That’s when I change my streamer.

Fish hard, friends.

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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com