Ask MidCurrent: How to Fish Streamers Deep on a Floating Line
An angler high-sticks a streamer through the top of a run, allowing the fly to sink before stripping it back. Photo: Phil Monahan
Question: I plan to fish streamers a lot this spring, but I struggle to cast sinking lines of any kind. How can I make sure my streamers get deep enough if I’m using a floating line?
—Charlie H, via email
Answer: While sinking-tip lines and loop-to-loop sinking heads make it easier to get streamers down in the water column, there are plenty of successful fly fishers who prefer floating lines. (Phil Monahan wrote about one such fishing buddy back in 2014.) With a 9-foot leader and a weighted fly (or flies), it is possible to fish deep even in high water. The key is to give your flies time to sink before you start stripping or swinging them
One of the best way to accomplish this is to use the “sink-and-swing” presentation. It’s really just a streamer version of the classic Leisenring Lift, and it’s effective for three reasons: It allows you to get your flies very deep, trout will sometimes eat during the dead-drift, and it allows you to pinpoint the spot where the flies start to swing.
Swinging the fly, rather than stripping it, allows you to keep the fly deeper. Photo: Charles Hildick-Smith
Drift to Sink the Flies
Whereas a traditional streamer presentation starts with a quartering-downstream cast. The sink-and-swing requires you to cast upstream, so your flies can get down in the water column without line tension hindering the drop. Here’s how to do it.
- Cast quartering upstream, dropping your flies directly into the heaviest current.
- If possible, “high-stick” the drift, keeping as much fly line off the water as you can, until the tip of your line is directly across from you. If you’re too far away to high-stick, proceed to #3.
- Start throwing roll-cast mends directly upstream of the tip of the fly line, to feed slack into the drift. This allows the flies to continue sinking.
- When the tip of the fly line is 10 feet upstream of your target, start making short strips to pull the flies off the bottom and swing them through the lie.
This brown trout fell for a yellow Beldar Rubberlegs streamer fished with the sink-and-swing technique. Photo: Phil Monahan
There’s a little bit of trial-and-error involved in this presentation, as you figure out how far upstream you need to cast to get your flies deep enough but not so deep that they hang up on the bottom. One of the great things about the sink-and-swing is that you can alter the second half of the presentation in myriad ways to make the flies dart across current, swing under tension, or anything in between. It’s also a good idea to change up the length and frequency of your strips to see what draws a strike.
