Not knowing the water you fish, it's difficult to give you a definitive answer, so I'll just cover some water.
For streamers, I'm usually fishing buggers, unweighed, weighed, and with brass bead, tungsten beads, cone heads. I fish them four ways.
River fishing from a drift boat -- one way to fish them is pounding the bank, using a floating line, long leader, and weighed or bead head fly. You know the drill, you cast close to the bank, and strip fast. Whether or not your fly is weighed depends on the depth of the water where those bank feeding browns are hanging out.
Another way to fish them from a boat is to go deep. A fast sinking or sink tip line, a heavy bead or conehead on the fly. You cast across, or even quartered upstream, you mend and mend, letting the fly get down, then you swing and strip. Sometimes it works to let the fly sit at the end of the drift, twitch it, even jig it, before you strip it. It varies with the depth and speed of the water you're fishing. There are big trout in good sized rivers in deep water at certain times of the year.
Then there's wade fishing. I have fished small buggers with a floating line in small streams and creeks, even beaver ponds. In a river, I'll go with a fast sinking line, unweighed fly on a short leader (you get good movement this way), or a beadhead bugger when I need to get deeper. Again, I'm casting across, drifting, swinging, letting it sit a little, and retrieving. If the hole is deep, I cast quarter upstream and get as many mends in as I can.
As tcorfey said, it's easier to mend with a sink tip line, that's why it's the preferred line now for this kind of fishing. That said, I used to have success with a full sinking line, river fishing. Sometimes I could get two mends in if I was quick, mostly only one. That's the trouble with a full sinking line -- but they do get the fly down.
A sink tip would be recommended, and the sink rate would be determined by the water you fish -- how deep do you need to go? Naturally, the shorter sink tips are easier to cast, and line control and mending is much easier. However, a longer tip will get the fly down deeper, depending on the water you fish.
Will you get more action with a sink tip line? The only true answer to that depends on where and what you are fishing. If you're already enjoying stripping streamers with a floating line, a sink tip or two will increase the ways you can present your fly, at depths where the fish are. That could be a good thing.
---------- Post added at 11:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:16 PM ----------
Joseph D. Bates who wrote the 400 pg. bible on Streamers and Bucktails called “Streamers and Bucktails” back in 1950 was a full sinking fly line guy. Then again, there were no sink tips in those days.
I don't have that book, but I have Bates'
Streamer Fly Tying and Fishing, 1966. Got it when I was in high school.
Actually, the sink tips I fish are the long ones, 24 feet. They are a bear to cast, but they get the fly down.
