This is a very common question that is asked when fishers are first starting out in the sport. The nymphs and dry flies have already been explored and fished, now you are ready to start throwing the MEAT! Streamer fishing is the act of fishing a streamer fly pattern that imitates a bigger organism or food source rather than just your nymphs and insect larvae. Streamer fishing can often be intimidating for newer anglers who see big flies and big hooks and think that you have to have some special casting technique to master, we would like to explain why streamer fishing is not only easy but a very effective way to fish for your streamside trout all the way up to Musky, Dorado and other big game species.
What is a Streamer?
Streamers flies come in many shapes and sizes, they can represent anything from a small minnow or shrimp all the way up to large smelt or even terrestrial prey items such as mice and rats! Unlike your wet and dry fly trout streamers refer to patterns being fished both top water and subsurface.
The streamers fly comes weighted and unweighted with different levels of buoyancy, some streamers are designed to be fished with a sinking line while others can be fished with float line. If the streamer fly has weight, then it can be fished on a floating line while your neutrally buoyant ones will be better fished on a sinking line. When streamer fishing the angler often casts out and then actively retrieves that discount fly giving it life in the form of movement. That is not the only retrieval method though; streamer flies are often swung in rivers where the tension on the line along with the current of the river will work that streamer and make it look very natural. The other method to fish streamers which is gaining more popularity is to dead drift them, this can be done under an indicator or with a tight line method very similar to euro nymphing. This allows anglers to work very small bodies of water more effectively while keeping their line off the water to prevent unnecessary spooking of fish.
Streamer flies are bigger than nymphs or dry flies and in turn require different gear to throw them effectively. When throwing a streamer fly a faster action rod is recommended as it can handle and give more power than a slower counterpart of the same weight. The line will be the most important part of your system as it is the catalyst that will pull your streamer fly through the air. We say that a weight forward streamer fly line with a very aggressive tapper is an essential part of throwing streamers, an aggressively tapper line means that the head portion of the line will be condensed and generally is shorter than 40 feet. This helps give your line more grain weight per foot and in turn gives more power to your streamer fly as it turns over. Streamer fishing does not require you to change your casting stroke or technique and as long as you have a solid casting form the aggressive taper of the line and the faster action rod will do all of the work.
The final act of streamer fishing is setting the hook! Your streamer fishing has paid off and you have a fish on the end of your line! When setting the hook on streamer flies it is going to be slightly different than nymphs and dries, when setting the hook for wet/dry flies you are raising your rod to set the hook, also known as a trout set. When streamer fishing you want to set the hook by keeping your rod tip pointed at the fish and then stripping the line in, this is known as the strip set and is the most effective way of setting the hook for two reasons; lots of streamers are hook point down and when you lift the rod it pulls that streamer fly right out of their mouth without hooking them. The second reason is because you get a much more responsive hook set, when you strip one foot of line in the streamer fly moves one foot.
Streamer fishing is a very fun and very interactive way to fly fish! You often see the takes and because those fish think they are chasing down a lively prey subject the actual eating of that streamer fly is much more aggressive and the fish hits harder! Streamers can be fished for all different species of fish in any body of water across the world, from salt to fresh, if streamer fishing is not part of your repertoire then you should definitely give it a go! You’ll have a blast and catch some fish!