River Question

[pastor dave]

Last year was my first year fly fishing, I absolutely love it, I spent the entire year fishing floating line for rainbow trout. This year I decided it was time to experiment. I picked up some sinking line and am going to hit one of the local rivers for walleye and pike. My question is this, what approach works the best, cast down stream and retrieve or up stream and let the fly swing?

[theboz]

Up and swing or up and strip. Sometimes down and across near eddies. Depending on the cfs on your river you may have it tough with a full sinking line . For me I find a sinktip alot easier to control in current then a full sinking line. With Eyes and Pike getting it in front of them may be more important than from what direction in the flow it comes from . Especially if they are holding in structure(rocks , logs etc,)

[pastor dave]

From what I have read the CFS is about 8400 cf/s. Basically what I am planning is swinging leech patterns and clouser minnows from the main current into eddies. I am just trying to do my research a little before I go.

[theboz]

With clousers they are already weighted so a full sink line may be overkill unless the river is extremely deep. Same goes if the leeches are weighted. All depends on how fast you need to get it in front of their face .and current and depth will determine that.

[silver creek]

Streamers: Think Outside the Swing | MidCurrent

[Hardyreels]

Hi Dave,

A word of caution when considering weighted flies; until you really have the casting of a weight down and by down I mean never even getting close to hitting your rod tip with leader or fly........... Beware of zinc eyes - conehead's and etc. I have not broken or chipped any of my own rods because my affair with such flies was short but have seen quite a few rod tops demoed by a bad cast.

Another thing to consider is that fishing a sinking line with a deep fly isn't the most fun you can have. Generally when confronted with conditions where this combo would be required I either pass or consider spinning gear. Since I don't use spinning gear (physiological block) I pass.

Ard

[newby]

IMO sink tip lines have their place on fast and/or deep rivers, but they really come into their own on a still water. For rivers a dead drift is best with certain things, other times (like with streamers) throwing up OR downsream and drifting and stripping can be effective. Experiment, fish on different rivers like their flies presented differently.

[pastor dave]

Thanks guys for input, after spending last night in the gym of my church learning how to cast sinking line (thanks the Lefty Kreh videos on Youtube) I hit the mighty North Saskatchewan River, with two goals in mind. One catch a pike, two catch a walleye. I am proud to say I caught none of the above. I got skunked and basically had one of those days. The sinking line worked really well in the current, the river was running hard today. Either way I feel like today was a success I finally got the courage to go out after a species other than trout. All I have to say is I love fly fishing no matter how bad the day. There is something almost surreal about chucking a fly.