This season has been all about options for moving the streamer. Our focus has been on the animations available to attract and then sell the trout on the streamer presentation. In this season finale, we talk about river scenarios and share some tips and strategies that help tie all of the previous episodes together.
We use a visible streamer for the tight line dance. We watch the streamer dip and swoon around rocks, tree parts and the river bank. Wherever there’s good structure, that’s the next target. The concept of the tight line dance allows us to hold the streamer around structure for longer, animating the streamer in every way imaginable to convince the trout.
The Crossover is a group of animations brought into a system, a mindset, or a framework for fishing your streamer.
The Crossover technique is all about getting the streamer low — in the strike zone — and then animating it within a narrow range, being careful not to move the fly out of the strike zone or move it too far.
Speed leads happen mostly in one lane, and they go faster than their parent current. Lane changes are exactly what they sound like — the fly is traveling in one lane, and then we deliberately bring the fly over to a nearby lane and travel down that one.
The speed lead is a term coined by our friend, Josh Stewart. Way back in 2017, I published a few articles about low-riding streamer presentations, with streamers tied on lead ball jigs. I’d gotten the idea from Rich Strolis, and it was a bit of an underground thing at the time. I remember that Stewey got in touch after reading my article, and we started sharing ideas and presentation styles with some of these flies. When I described leading low but faster than the current, Josh said he called it a speed lead, and it was one of his best tactics for stirring up big trout . . .
We’re here to talk about one of the most basic movements performed on any fly, lure or bait — jigging.
Moving the fly up and then letting it drop is a simple motion with complex options. And in this podcast, we break down the differences between slack jigging, contact jigging and pendulum jigging.
Streamer fishing is best when we actively and intentionally move the fly. But with glides and slides, our animations are often subtle, because sometimes these are the most natural or convincing looks . . .
I think drop rate is the most important quality of a streamer. I believe how fast a fly falls is the biggest factor in its performance, because drop rate affects everything else about how we might move the fly.
Weight is easily measurable, so it’s a comfortable quality to talk about and compare. Drop rate can be measured, but it’s not easy. And I don’t know many anglers who know the ips rating (inches per second) for their streamers. But maybe we should . . .
The Head Flip is a pivot. It’s a simple change of the streamer’s head angle, from down and across to up and across, or from upstream to downstream. This pivot doesn’t necessarily move the fly out of its area, but the motion might seem pretty dramatic to a trout. The Head Flip shows trout an opportunity for an easy meal, and it might signal a moment of vulnerability. It’s one of our favorites animations to a streamer.
The ability to move the fly with the rod tip and not just the line hand is a fundamental skill that opens creative options for every streamer angler.
Almost two decades ago, Kelly Galloup’s first streamer book changed the way anglers thought about moving a streamer. All these years later, the jerk strip isn’t just one way to move the streamer. It’s a technique for using both hands, in concert, synchronized, for presentations that are impossible to achieve any other way.
Move the fly with the rod tip and then recover with the line hand. In this way, the Jerk Strip sets the table for everything else to follow in this Troutbitten Skills Series on Streamer Presentations . . .
Season fourteen is a ten-part Troutbitten Skill Series, all about Streamer Presentations. Streamer fishing is salesmanship. 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?
Most anglers hate this wasted time. In fact, all of this preparation just to go fishing puts a lot of anglers off in the first place. And the colder it is, or the longer you plan to be out there fishing, or the more tactics you plan to use the more all of this pre-trip prep is required.
We want a system for minimizing the time between cutting the car engine to walking away from the vehicle with our fly rod in hand.
The Troutbitten Shop Winter Sale ’24 is here, with all leaders, hats, stickers and apparel back in stock.