Posted: Sun 02/22/09 5:22 pm Post subject: Streamer Flies: Winter Tailwater Tips & Techniques
When most people think of winter tailwater fishing the first thing that comes to mind is midges. The abundance and sheers numbers of this food source available to trout during the winter make this kind of fishing the most productive. Streamers? In winter? The common misconception is that streamer fishing is most productive in the spring and fall time when trout seem to be the most aggressive. Recently I was fishing a tailwater when the air temperature in the morning was around 7 degrees. Granted it did warm up later in the day, which proved to me that water temperature does have something to do with the aggressiveness of trout. Common knowledge right? Midge fishing can be very productive in the early morning hours into the afternoon. Just for kicks I threw on a sinking leader and an ungodly size #4 streamer. I fished it just like I would in the spring, stripping back to me as fast as humanly possible. To my surprise, a beautiful 25-26’’ brown slammed my fly like it was the last meal he was ever going to eat. Since the flows are generally low during winter, I use a floating line combined with a sinking leader or just a simple 10 ft. section of 10lb maxima for a leader. I curious to find out what streamer fishing systems other people are using? Do you use a sinking fly line or floating? What lb. test leader do you use? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated
Great topic and good questions! I fish a lot of free flowing trout streams and Lake Ontario tributaries here in western New York, so I don't have the "tailwater" perspective that you have. And I will have to try the sinking leader to see how it would work. And I think it would work really well!
I do a lot of streamer fishing out here, and I use a variety of methods! I have used a 4 or 6 foot sink tip that I loop to may WFF line and then tie on a 4 foot section 8 to 10 lb. test (depending on what type of fish I am going after) letting the fly drift and swing through the current into the tailout or pool. Sometimes I strip it, sometimes I don't. The fish tell me what they want. I have also used the same set up, but with a longer, lighter leader tapered to 5x for suspended fish that are a little more weary. I then watch the end of my floating fly line for the take. I usually swing nymphs or wet flies this way and it can be the ticket to catching fish when no one else is!
I also dead drift streamers under an indicator just like you would when nymph fishing. I even add a few split shot to the leader from 6 to 10 inches above the fly if the water is deep or high. This method is killer on medium to high water, and we catch a ton of fish this way! It is probably our #1 method for taking spring steelhead. It may be due to the fact that most people don't fish a streamer this way and the fish like the change. But i'm telling you it works well!!
I'm even thinking of trying to tie some top water streamers for bass, pike and trout. But we'll see how that works out!!
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