Fishing Marginal Water

Photo: Dom Swentosky

How often do you head to the same spot on your favorite river, and bypass all the water before or after it? I’m as guilty of this as anyone (probably more so). Once I’ve found a section that I enjoy, I tend to fish it to death, and ignore a lot of the less-obvious water within that portion of the river.

I ignore the marginal water, or as Dom Swentosky describes it, “the part of a river that nobody fishes, the boundary waters, downstream of the good stuff.”

In his latest over at Troutbitten, Dom talks about how we often overlook this marginal water, and offers some tips and tricks for effectively fishing it.

The most important thing to remember when exploring this water is that it might not hold fish year-round.

“Success in marginal water is often seasonal,” Dom writes. “And understanding prime times is just another thing to learn about these off-the-map locations.”

You also need to be willing to cover a lot of water. In stretches of river without obvious habitat or lies, the fish will be spread out, and it’s your job to put in the miles to find the fish. Dom recommends throwing streamers as an effective way to prospect through this water.

“Streamers are my first choice, and I cover every likely piece of the river with just a cast or two,” he writes. “If a spot does deserve a second cast, then the trout gets two different looks — maybe an aggressive jerk strip on the first pass and a calm slow slide on the second. I mix in speed leads, head flips and every other streamer presentation that I know, but I move the streamer more than I drift it.”

You can read the rest of the story here.