Streamer fishing techniques

I've been told by several of the local guides that once February rolls around the fish in this river become too sophisticated for streamers and that only a good replication of the natural foods trout are feeding on will work. This generally means indicator fishing with small mayfly nymphs, caddis emergers or chironomid pupae. These small flies do work and if indicator fishing puts a smile on your face, what is there to even consider?

For me indicator fishing in small doses is tolerable and once a nice trout is on the line, who cares about the method that got him to bite. But unless the action is non-stop or nothing else will work, indicator fishing just doesn't ring my bell. The takes are subtle and even if aggressive, the trout seldom know they've been hooked until you telegraph that fact to them with a bent rod.

For the stretch of river I'm fishing these days I'm enjoying streamers... both the active and direct nature of the presentation and the jolt on my rod when a fish hits does it for me. I'm not sure if I'm catching more fish or bigger fish than my indicator-using friends but I know I like my method better. Enough opinions and drama...how do you fish streamers effectively on the Guadalupe?

Crayfish

First of all the flies...I'm down to two or three patterns. They are an egg-sucking leech , a streamer loosely emulating a wooly bugger but with bead chain eyes, and a simi seal body along with the obligatory marabou tail, and lastly are several versions and colors of crayfish patterns.

Egg-sucking leech

Bead chain leech

Usually I'll fish according to what the water conditions dictate. Fast water, slow water, eddies, cover, stream obstructions, foam lines, current breaks, holes, slack spots, deep water, shallow water...really all the conditions encountered in the typical stream. Add to that water conditions, temperatures, barometric pressure, water color, cloud cover or bright sunlight, frontal systems...well you know what I mean. Each parameter might affect where trout will lie, whether they will feed aggressively or passively, and what will make them strike.

Given that I understand how trout will react to any of the above in only a cursory manner, I usually attack the problem of how to fish my streamers in the following way.

1. I start by fishing slack water of the pool with several patterns, usually a light and a dark leech, in a fan casting pattern. I'll fish the close areas first and then extend my casts further out. This usually nets me a fish or two in the morning and evening in this area. I'll vary my retrieves from steady, to twitchy, to stop and go until something works. All on a floating line since the water in this area is no more than 4 feet deep.

2. Next I'll move to the head of the pool where I'll employ a number of different techniques. The best one so far has been a direct cast into the upstream current with a fast retrieve to match, or slightly exceed, current speeds. This has been quite successful and has netted me a number of nice fish. The next method is to swing the fly and I'll do this starting with casts directly perpendicular to the bank and working my way to casts almost parallel to current flows. Different degrees of mending are required to compensate for current flows as well as exploring different depths of water. This second method has netted me a few fish but hasn't performed as well as expected.

3. Next I'll fish the tail of the upstream pool. Here swinging the fly across the current works quite well and generally results in a few fish before all the activity puts them down. From this point I can also "Bang the Bank" on the opposite shore and this has resulted in a few nice fish. This means casting the streamer to within inches of the shore, executing a few fast strips and recasting, unless of course a fish gets in the way. These hits are particularly explosive.

4. The water in the tail of my home pool is quite fast and the methods used in (3) don't work well. Here I've caught fish by high-sticking small nymphs and by swinging a fly in the current. I've hooked a couple of fish by swinging but they immediately headed downstream and were lost. I've tried an upstream cast but the current moved too fast to effectively retrieve the line under control.

I believe these methods will work on any part of the Guadalupe with only small adjustments for local conditions like water depth or current speeds.