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[Brian Wise]

I have thrown half a dozen casts this year with a nymph.....the rest have been streamers. Addiction is an understatement.

[Al Agnew]

Put me in the streamer camp. The beauty of streamers is that they can be fished effectively in all kinds of holding areas. With nymphs, you almost need fairly strong current, and then you have to be changing weight and distance from indicator to flies every time you come to stronger current or water of different depth. I'm too lazy to do that, so I just fish them the way I have them rigged, and though I still catch fish, I know I'm not fishing optimally. But with streamers, you just cast them anywhere.

Today was a good example. I was floating a ten mile section of the Yellowstone. Weather was cloudy, but I was trying to get fish to come up to a dry fly. It wasn't working. I started catching a few on nymphs. Tried a streamer for a while with no action. The water on the Yellowstone is just too warm right now for the fish to be chasing....

But then I came to the mouth of Nelson's Spring Creek. The creek is one of the famous spring creeks near Livingston, private, limited number of people fishing it per day, cost $125 a day this time of year. But at the mouth, the creek is within the high water marks of the river itself, so it's okay to fish it from the river up through a big, wide, flat, waist deep pool about 60 yards long. This is slack water, gin clear, and it always seems to have rising trout. People fish it constantly...seems like every guide stops to let their clients try to catch these fish on dry flies. Hence, they are extremely picky and wary. I've caught a couple of them on dries once or twice, but it's graduate level fishing.

So what do I do? Well, today I put on a streamer, one of my own rabbit fur concoctions, about 2 inches long, dark and light brown. Those fish were attacking it. I missed a lot of strikes and had several brief hook-ups, including a massive fish. But I ended up catching a 16 inch brown, then a 15 inch rainbow, then a 13 inch brown, a 17 inch rainbow, and a beautiful 21 inch brown. Definitely made my day.

Whenever I come to water like that, slow and reasonably deep, I have to throw the "meat and potatoes", whether it's in Missouri or Montana.

And I no longer fish woolybuggers much. I've gotten to where I fish my own patterns almost exclusively. They are simple ties. The smaller ones, on size 4-6 streamer hooks, start out with about a 1.25 inch red squirrel strip for a tail, tied right at the end of the shank. Then I wrap lead wire up to within a quarter inch of the eye, then wrap cross cut rabbit strips up over the lead. I tie them in all black, or with dark brown or olive tail, lighter brown or olive just above the tail, and dark brown or olive to finish it out.

The bigger ones, on a size 1-2 streamer hook, start out with a 2 inch rabbit strip, and then sometimes some glittery flossy stuff for the body and cross cut rabbit wound for a "head", with dumbbell eyes for weight. Or else just the crosscut rabbit for body and head. Either mostly black, two tone olive, two tone brown, occasionally mostly white or mostly yellow with some flashabou.

[dave potts]

How about posting some pictures of those streamers Al-they sound interesting.

Dave

[Nortrad]

Wow, thanks for the recipes. I'm heading out West next week to N. Idaho, will try some of those rabbit streamers. Thanks again!

[Jason R.]

Rabbit streamers like that are awesome for smallmouth too. When I worked out west we used stuff like that on the gunnison with great success.

[Chase Replogle]

I am a fan. I usually strip cracklebacks. While not necessarily full streamers, they tend to do well for me. I've also been a bugger fan but they've not done as well.

What are your favorite streamers to strip, Siusaluki?

How do you strip a crackleback? Cast it out and strip it underwater like a bugger? I have drifted and swung them but never stripped one like a streamer.

Chase

[mic]

Concur Al... would love to see some pics.

How about posting some pictures of those streamers Al-they sound interesting.

Dave

[Bill Anderson]

Looking back over the past 40 or so years of flinging flies, I have come to the conclusion that streamers/wooly buggers/crawdad patterns have been my most successful flies. The one thing all these flies have in common is that they are stripped/moved like live critters. I have caught the majority of my larger fish on them. I can't count the times I have started out with nymphs or other drift type flies, only to get disgusted, switched over to a wooly bugger, ect., and almost immediately started catching fish. All game fish are predatory, and a moving fly triggers their feeding instincts to give chase. Yeah, I still carry hundreds of nymphs, midges and larger dries, but my most successful flies are those that are stripped. When I first get to the river, but see no indication of fish feeding on top, I go to a stripped type fly and usually it turns out to be the best choice, at least for me. You always have good contact with the fly while stripping, and with no slack line, the take is usually a hard one and hookups are easy.