What he calls broadside, I normally upstream mend to get that fly to the bottom, he just lets is drag. I noticed this technique used on coaster brookies on the north shore. I`m going to have to try it. Seems wrong to me however.
The idea with the broadside presentation is to allow the tip and the fly to sink to a specific level and then move quickly across the run with fly being shown broadside to holding fish hopefully to elicit an aggressive response.
One thing you can do to get more depth in either of the approaches he shows is to step down after the cast and the mend, giving the whole rig a little more time to drop if more depth is desired.
Also one of the fun things about tips is that you can vary length and weight to consistently swing at pretty much any depth you want. The more you mess with them the more you'll be able to look at a run and know what you want to use to achieve the desired depth to swing.
The better you get to know specific runs the less time you'll spend trying to figure out how to get the proper presentation you desire.
Tips allow you to work anywhere in the river.
Regardless of how far you are able to drop a weighted fly before the swing actually begins the fly and line will rise in the water column, dependent on the current speed, when the swing begins.
Varying the length and grain weight of your tip will raise or lower where your fly swings.
Out here in the west we're trying to get uniform swings across the river, we don't typically want the fly to dart around, at all, especially in winter.
I'm talking steelhead here not trout.
The rule of thumb is usually to make the cast, make whatever adjustments, mends, you need and when the line comes tight allow it to swing.
Believe it or not you can mend a skagit and you can easily mend running line however you typically don't want to mend after the cast has been completely set up. You don't want the fly to suddenly move while it's swinging.
You can control the speed of the overall swing with the tip of your rod.
You can point the tip out directly across the river, holding your running line slightly off the water near you. As the line starts to reach directly downstream from your rod tip you can follow the line with your rod tip and control the final portion of your swing that way.
Skagits are actually extremely versatile tools for fishing at depth. Once you start messing around with them you'll discover a whole bunch of different ways to use them.
