Do you guys typically do this? I have a river that has some good salmon activity during the smelt run. I rarely fish streamers so I only have a floating line. My question is - if you are fishing smelt patterns or other streamers how often do you put split shot/weight on your leader?
I feel like it would take away from the presentation of the smelt pattern but I feel like I would need it in some scenarios. I just don't feel like there is enough weight on my smelt flies I purchased to really get decent depth but maybe I'm over thinking it?
Also, generally how short of leaders do you do when fishing streamers? I don't remember the size of the patterns I got and am not good enough at simply looking at the hook and knowing/guessing the size but I would assume it's probably a "normal" smelt imitation in terms of size. I was thinking of using a 9ft 4x or 3x leader and cutting it back a bit?
Any help advice or input would be appreciated.
I have never fished a smelt streamer pattern for salmon but I hope this general post on streamers is some help.
The back story of my reply below goes back many, many, many years when I was in a talk by
Lefty Kreh. In his talk,
he emphasized that prey which act naturally and vulnerable are most often eaten, and our flies should do the same.
He gave an example of a fly fisher who fishes a streamer so that it goes right toward a large trout hiding along a rock or boulder. That is not natural and may spook the trout, since prey do not charge predators.
His approach was to mend cast down and across well above the boulder and stack mended to allow the streamer to sink. When it had sunk to the level of the fish and drifted into position, he mended down and across above the rock so the cross current mended line would catch the current and pull the streamer across the face of the boulder. This presented a broadside view of the streamer like a baitfish trying to sneak across the front of the boulder from the bank to the other side of the boulder. As the streamer reached the far side of the rock in front of the boulder, the trout could nail it.
A few years later I was on the San Juan River during a massive water release during the
spring thermocline turnover. The flow was 5000 CFS, and normal flow are about 700 - 1000 CFS. The water was fast and dirty and the usual methods of fishing flies below a strike indicator were not working.
I remembered what Lefty had said during that presentation and thought a black wooly bugger might work. But how should I fish it? I was above the cable hole where the San Juan River has side channels and the flow more spread out. From the ridge above the river I could see some depressions and wide pockets in the river and I thought some trout would be holding in them. So I fished streams across over the lips of those depression like Lefty suggested fishing to the boulder.
I hooked fish after fish from those holding areas.
So the specific technique I learned from Lefty; but
what Lefty really taught me was to have a strategy when fishing streamers. Just as we have a specific dry fly strategy when casting to a rising trout as to casting position, mends, etc; and a nymphing strategy as to where to cast and mend when nymphing; when the same amount of thought is used during fishing streamers, I believe we tend to learn from both our successes and failures.
So here is the post I came up with on how to weight a streamer based on Lefty's advice to me:
One would not think a question on how to weight a streamer for fly fishing would have much to do with the study of philosophy, but I find this question to be highly philosophical. Philosophy taught me that INTENT must always precede CONTENT.
So the critical question is NOT how to to weight the streamer BUT how do you want the streamer to act, and what are you trying to do with the streamer. What is your INTENT? That will determine CONTENT, what you must do and how you must act.
For example, if you weight the streamer with a bead head, and fish it on a floating line with a longer leader to let the fly sink, it will act as a jig. When you strip it in, the direction of pull is up and the strips will give the streamer a jigging action. So if your intent is to have the streamer act as a jig, weight the head of the fly.
If your intent is to have the fly avoid snags by to to riding ABOVE the bottom, you use a sink tip line and an unweighted lighter than water streamer that will ride above the sink tip line. Then when you strip, you get a reverse jigging action with the fly diving down then back up. The length of the leader determines how high above the bottom the fly will ride.
You can use your floating line and the "skittering anchor" method to do the same thing as explained by Gary Borger in his blog below.
Since you think the flies you bought do NOT have enough weight, the skittering anchor might be one you could use.
Gary Borger >> Blog Archive >> Skittering Anchor
If your intent is to swing just under the water surface or to skate the streamer, you use a floating line and an unweighted streamer and cast across or down and across and the mend the floating line to get the swing/skate you want.
If your intent is to swing the streamer deep in front of a prime holding lie, you fish the streamer on a sink tip line or poly leader system and mend down and across when the fly has sunk to the right level and position. The down and across mend will catch the current, causing the streamer to speed up and swing across in front of the fish presenting a broadside view.
These are only a few of the possibilities. So what you want to do will determine how you set up the streamer, the fly line, the leader, your cast and fly line manipulation after the cast.
So you weight the streamer if you want it to sink AND the distribution of the weight determines the attitude of the streamer under water and how fast it sinks. You unweight the streamer if you want it to ride higher than the leader.
You use a floating or sinking line to determine the direction of pull on the streamer and to determine the position of the streamer in the water column.
You add weight to the leader and manage the amount of weight and position of the weight depending on your intent.
You manage the length of the leader to determine how close you want the fly to be at the level of the fly line tip AND the freedom of the streamer to move in the current from the position of the fly line tip.
Fishing a streamer is about managing the position of the streamer in relation to the fly line AND then manipulating the fly line (casting, mending, stripping) to get the streamer act the way you want. Think of streamer fishing as multiple SYSTEMS of fishing and you must first determine what you want to do before you ask about a system to do that.
