Fall is rolling in and that means a couple things out here. One, winter is coming, so soak up every nice day you can and get out there and fish, hunt, hike, bike, camp, or whatever outdoor activity turns your crank. Second, if your go to technique is not throwing streamers and wearing out your arm all day casting, telling yourself “ not looking for a ton of fish, just the one”, fall is a great time- one of THE times to chuck some meat and go hunting.
Mindset
Some quick tips. Start with the right mindset. Eye of the tiger. Take it to em. Think that third liner enforcer hockey player chirping at the face of goading a guy into dropping the mitts and going for a tilt. It is not robotic casting, it is cast, strip, cadence, even pauses, and really selling the presentation. Hunting, you are looking for that brawl and taking it to them. This is not dead drift managing micro drag. This is work. Over, and over, and over. Believe.
Even on a good streamer day there will be lulls and banks that should have produced. Then bam, you find a bank with a bunch that want to play. Keep casting and keep experimenting with retrieve speeds, depth, size and colors of flies. The best days it feels like all the fish in the ditch want to chase and grab and you can move them on anything. Those are special days, not the norm. Watching trout exhibit predator behavior is really fun and shows you there is more to them than bug sipping snobbery.
Selection
Around here in the fall some of the smaller bugger style streamers work well. Could be we have a bunch of smaller crayfish around, and that is trout candy. That size is a very ‘ approachable’ meal for all age classes of fish. Monster streamers are great and fun to watch. Not so fun to cast all day. It is crazy how big a meal even a smaller size fish will try and fight out of its weight class on for sure. They can move some good ones, but day in day out smaller to medium can move more. The old tandem smaller streamer rig is a good look this time of year and lets you experiment with two different colors, weights and even depth. Try it.
Have fun this fall, and cheers to some great streamer fishing and hopefully some big fish grip and grins!
Fall Fly Recs
Jig Short Stop Leech
The new Shortstop Leech is one of the best color styles of all time with a thin mint.
Skerik’s High Resolution Bugger
This is the new and improved wooly bugger, with lots of flash, anodized cones and tons of fish catching attraction
