Didn't take much to get myself motivated to go fishing last Sunday. I've been thinking about getting myself into streamer fishing. Particularly on small creeks. I've tied some flies that resemble small creek minnows for quite some time but was too greedy to try them out once I started catching trout with my usual suspect flies. On the way to the creek, I was rehearsing in my head how I was going to fish the fly...
Based on rehearsed scenario, rigged the gear once I got to the creek and off I went thinking that I will catch the biggest trout in every pool...
Off the bet, I've realized that it's not going to be an easy task to be flinging heavy streamer with my 6 feet, 3 wt rod in heavily branched creek so I only fished leass canopied sections of the creek. Cast, retrieve, retrieve, retrieve...Cast, retrieve, retrieve, retrieve.. and then I felt a tug at the end of the line. Thought to myself that "Finally! I've learned how to fish with streamer in a small mountain creek!". However, the struggle from the fish felt somewhat unusual. Just felt like I was lugging a small branch with my rod. Due to ill timing of some sort, I've managed to hook dorsal fin of the fish. Obviously, I never felt the bite, just some dumb luck snagging... I've released the poor brownie as gentle as I can...
With somewhat mixed feeling about the last performance, I've relocated to a better looking pool for that huge trout I am certain that I will catch with my shiny black nose dace fly. However, I did manage to "hook" yet another brownie, except I've hooked the poor bastard on the eye socket... In my somewhat long both saltwater and freshwater fishing career, Ihave yet to hook a fish in the eye until yesterday. Thought about taking a picture of the massacre but didn't have the nerve to take a snapshot of my crime. I release the brownie as gentle as I can...only to see it floating away with it's belly pointing straight up in the air...
I immediately switch over to a beaded prince fly and managed to hook a few browns (in the mouth). Obviously, I did grab their attention with the streamer but couldn't manage the line properly to feel their take and when I did, I somehow foul hooked them with image you will see in a horror flick.
Now, should I continue to kill these fish in the name of betterment? Or should I stick to the safe method (at least for the fish)? any suggestions?
keep hitting them with those streamers. Water looks cold for them to chase streamers aggressively. Try dead drifitng small ones above a nymph. people do that in deep pockets in winter. I personally just nymph that situation, but that's cause I'm nymph crazy.
ReplyDeleteYou are right! They were being incredibly aggressive towards the streamer than I thought. Maybe I had too much slack in my line during retrieval. I will try your suggestion next time and hopefully post some live fish pics
ReplyDeleteSweet photos and even sweeter writing. Did you fish the streamers up or down stream? I'm never sure how I should be fishing streamers in small creeks. Can you show us some photos of small creek streamers? So I can copy them to try here.
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