Help with streamers

[Bjorn]

OK, so, yesterday I resolved to throw 95% streamers on the EW. Certainly a good river for it and it is a big gap in my fishing repertoire. I had a pretty frustrating day of SEEING lots and lots of fish and converting about 5% to be hooked fish.

I rose a lot of fish... probably had 60 refusals or short strikes. Now, when you are having a day like that is it just time to put the streamer down or is there a tweak? I didn't have a lot of streamers to choose from, but did I need a different bug? A different action? A whole different approach (nymphing instead of streamers)?

If you cast into a likely spot and get a swipe on the streamer, do you go back to that spot? What is your second cast?

It was fun to see that many fish, but man was it frustrating too. In one stretch I was standing in the middle of the river with good water on both sides. I'd cast to one side and get a strike/swipe/refusal and then cast to the other side and have another... in that one spot, in about 30 minutes I must have missed at least 20 swipes/strikes/refusals. I would have pulled my hair out if I had more of it.

B-

[WT]

Bjorn, sometime fish will hit streamers to stun them, and then come back and actually take the fly. So if you where having fish short strike them, you might consider pausing the fly for a second.

I would also recommend reading Kelly Gallups book, and/or renting his DVD on fishing streamers... lots of good information in it and its available from netflixs

[jbird]

I agree with WT on pausing the fly. Even let some line go so the fly drifts back for a moment. You definitly had the right fly with fish showing that much interest. Sometimes stripping it hard and fast followed by a pause will get them to grab. Also, 75% of strikes when your stripping come between strips, so be prepaired and hang on. The hardest thing to do when streamer fishing is to NOT set the hook with the rod. Lifting your rod for the hookset is a kneejerk reaction that usually results in a missed fish. Just let the fish hook himself, dont raise the rod til the fish is definitly on.

[Jgoding]

How were you stripping the fly? Pretty quickly or slow? (hmmm, that kind of sounds dirty...)

I remember this happening to me on Almanor once with smallies with conventional gear. They would come in and short strike or make that quick strike motion but miss. The only way to get them to hit was to just reel in crazy fast. At the time it made sense to me as my interpretation was the fish were having a reactionary strike on the normal/slow retrieve but were not being triggered to bite at the end or were somehow able to deduce at the last second that they were being fooled.

With the very fast retrieve I figured I could get that eat it or lose the opportunity to eat strike. It worked quite well as fish would just come screaming in and hit the lure.

Also, perhaps what you were seeing wasn't a feeding response either but more of a territorial response as well where the fish isn't trying to feed but more to intimidate or scare away competition by rushing in quickly.

[Dave Neal]

Bjorn, a lot of greats points mentioned above. Jbird's comments are spot on!

I was also on the EW yesterday, afternoon-evening.

I believe a lot of what you experienced was the result of CA DFG stocking thousands of small brown trout and some cutty's this spring. A lot of the fish we are catching right now are little dinks that are part of the "put & grow" stocking program on the EW (like Crowley).

We had lots of quick grabs and flashes (with the tannin stained higher water, they always looked like big fish at first!!) I kept telling myself we should go to a BIG streamer to keep the little buggers off our small nymphs!

Fish in the EW are voracious and have a lot of forage fish to feed on (like eight different species), which contribute too their rapid growth & their propensity too demolish streamer patterns.

My suggestion is to continue running the streamer from time to time, you'll know it when one of the big boys in there decide it's food. Try keeping the line under some tension when you decide the presentation is appropriate in order too feel/set the hook...this takes practice. There can be some art too fishing streamers.

My bet would be this time next year, your hookup ratio will be a lot better as those smaller mouths become bigger fish and there's more to set that hook on!!!

Good luck.

[Bjorn]

Thanks for all the advice. Lots to think about.

I was in a big straw hay yesterday, blue Xterra.

Lots of those fish were certainly not monsters. I landed three nice fish and a few smaller fish on the streamers... two rainbows, 18", 17" and one brown 18-19". I also lost one brown that was big... really big... 22-26" I'd say. I caught the 18-19" a few casts later, so I had a good idea of how much bigger that fish was... it jumped for me twice.

All the big fish came as I basically high sticked the streamer with no action on it at all. Most all of the missed strikes came when I was trying to put some movement on the fly.

Oh, so much to learn. I'm trying to push my comfort zone a bit, expand my horizons and so on. The EW is certainly a good river to throw streamers on and I'll be back... just as soon as I get another hall-pass.

B-

[Dave Neal]

Bjorn, wow, sounds like you had a great day. Good on ya!

Yeah, high sticking a streamer with a lot of weight on the leader is deadly sometimes on the EW. I like to lead the fly with the rod and add some lift and drop as well. It's great for fast choppy water, deep slots, and deeper heavy water where you're fishing short drifts.

Also, traditional down & across swinging works, and upstream casting and dead drifting works well, too. There are so many ways to fish a streamer it's fun committing to it for a day, like you did, just to see what happens. It's conducive too moving & covering water.

Heck, I have even caught fish casting a white/grey Zonker as a dry fly below the dam. You'll see small fish that get flushed out the reservoir and they'll be floating and twitching on the surface because they're stunned... watch those fish and you'll see MONSTERS rise up from the abyss and eat em' up like they're sipping a trico spinnerfall!! For a drift or two a Zonker will often float before it gets wet enough to sink... just walk up stealthy and cast it like a dry fly and let it float and twitch it a little and hold on! A foam bodied Zonker would be sweet, I suppose.

[Bjorn]

The EW certainly is a great streamer river, but I wonder how lessons learned there could be transferred to other rivers... there are A LOT of bait fish in the EW, probably more than any other river I'm aware of. I wonder how a day of committed streamering on the McCloud, Pit or Upper Sac might go?

Once, at the Power House Riffle on Hat Creek, in the middle of the day and all alone (it does happen from time to time there) I put on a black marabou chain bead leech (about a #2) and walked from the top to the bottom... had three fish to hand in 20 minutes, all 14"-16". Never happened for me again there although I tried it probably 15 more times.

[SLOwag]

I've resorted at times to cutting the fly down with nippers to shorten the tail, this has brought some success but I also tend to vary the retrieves as mentioned above to get a hookup. Make sure you persevere and get comfortable with the streamer, it's a great item to have in your arsenal and I've caught some of my largest trout on them in the fall.

[emerger]

I was up on the EW last weekend and threw streamers 75% of the time with great success. The majority of the time I was pounding the banks and had the majority of the action there stripping the streamers out of the grass/bank into the water and stripping fast. The most successful way for me last weekend on the EW was to cast upstream to the bank and strip the streamer fast down stream. The fly comes quickly into the fish's feeding or holding zone and they hammered it continously all weekend. I also prefer to fish light colored streamers........pretty much white/cream/tan/yellow rabbit hair conehead flies since I think it's more fun to be able to watch the streamer throughout the entire retrieve so you can see when the fish hits or even misses it. Hell, I don't even care when the fish don't get hooked up if you can watch the fly through the water and see the attack! Then again, I''m addicted to streamer fishing and prefer it even to the great dry fly opportunities that go with the monster hatches that were poppin last weekend.
Cheers