Something inside the angler changes when we fish a streamer. Clip off the dry fly and swap out the nymph. Get rid of the notion that we’re imitating a small helpless food form with a dead drift, and start moving that streamer through the water. Bring it to life — that’s our mindset. Make it dance. Swing it, strip it, jig it. Twitch, jerk, and manipulate the rod tip together with the line hand into every combination, because we’re imitating a living, swimming baitfish with a motor for motion, right?

Sure. Sometimes trout respond best to fast or even erratic presentations. And I routinely advocate for trying everything with a streamer at the end of the line. But included in that bag of tricks is an assortment of subtle moves too. Rolling the bottom, gliding mid-current along a knee-deep riffle and slow-sliding off the bank — these maneuvers are just as enticing and catch just as many trout as do flashy retrieves. But we tend to forget them. Or rather, we might not have the discipline to stay with an understated look for very long, because the modest stuff isn’t as exciting as the razzle-dazzle.

This handful of subtle moves requires an angler with restraint and commitment. Otherwise, the rod tip and line hand are back to big motions and brash, bold movements in no time.

READ: Troutbitten | Streamer Presentations — Strips, Jig and Jerks

As streamer anglers, we should be careful that our want to move a streamer doesn’t grow to obsession. Good streamer work requires a full set of skills and retrieves. And talented anglers know what they’re doing — they perform these streamer skills and maneuvers with purpose.

To cultivate that kind of intention, I argue that putting a name to the tactic at hand helps us to focus. And through this Steamer Presentations Series on Troutbitten, that’s what I’ve done. Personally, I enjoy cycling through my favorite looks and retrieves to see what the trout want, because It keeps me centered and immersed in the activity.

So here’s another pair of terms to add to the lineup: gliding and sliding.

Both of these allow the river current to do most of the animation to the fly. How the line and leader travel, either with or against the current, sets up the streamer’s next move. And gliding and sliding is more about what you do with the attached line than the streamer itself.

Bill Dell with a cold one.

It’s Already Moving

If you’re coming from a dead drift mindset — from fishing a lot of nymphs and dry flies — then you might think that your streamer is just dead drifting if you don’t animate it. But this is rarely the case.

Streamers surely can be dead drifted, but it takes detailed attention to keep a large fly in one current seam, traveling at the speed of the water around it. More often, the material mass of a larger fly and the thicker tippets we tie to the eye of a streamer hook gather enough of the surrounding currents to put the fly in motion, at least a bit. And often, that subtle action is already enough movement to entice a trout.

READ: Troutbitten | Streamers as an Easy Meal — The Old School Streamer Thing

Most of the materials that we build into a streamer have inherent motion as well. Feathers and fur, hackle and rubber legs all have enough wave and wiggle in the water to simulate life and stimulate a response.

The point is, your streamer is already moving, even before your first strip, jig or jerk. The nature of its construction creates movement. The method of delivery and the tackle used has it gliding or sliding without doing much at all.

Let’s get to that . . .

Glides

Streamers are fished with tension through the line and to the rod tip. We strip with the line hand or perform animations with the rod, and the fly moves. But after that motion, the leader continues to influence the fly.

Remember, no matter what style of fishing, wherever the tippet and leader is, that’s where the fly is going next. Realize that a streamer tracks to the line, and it’s probably not on a perfect dead drift.

Gliding the streamer is often what people mean when saying, “I was just driftin’ ‘em.”

Essentially, gliding is a way to guide the long fly through the river without crossing seams in a major way. We might cast up, glide down one lane, manipulate the path of the line to take the streamer to the left of the nearest rock, and then stall it in the pocket behind. That’s gliding. Basically, we’re in control of the fly without animating it much. Let the currents and the tension on the leader do the work. Often, that’s all you need. Cast. Glide. Watch it swoon. And hold on tight.

River. He’s always looking.

Slides

A glide that crosses current seams becomes a slide. This distinction is important, because one of the key things to plan out and recognize about any streamer presentation is whether the fly is holding one seam or making progress across multiple lanes.

A sliding streamer doesn’t dart or pulse, because we aren’t adding any other movement beyond what the line and tension to the rod tip impart. We might strip to recover slack, but not so much as to animate the fly. Instead, we watch the line, leader and fly make progress sideways, taking the streamer’s head across currents and ending up in a far different place than where it started.

Years ago, I developed what I call the slow slide while night fishing. Casting to the bank puts the night fly in the soft water next to the bank, while the leader lays in the faster currents away from the bank. Then, instead of stripping, I learned to allow the tension of the leader to turn the head of the fly down and across. And if I kept my rod tip mostly downstream of the leader and fly, the fly would hold the soft bank seam for some time, drifting mostly downstream with a side profile to the trout but with enough tension to gradually, slowly, slide off the bank and finally into the main current. The slow slide is still my best producer after dark, and I work slow slides into daylight tactics with streamers a great deal.

READ: Troutbitten | Modern Streamer: Too Much Motion? Are we moving them too fast?

Up, Up and Over

Glides start with a cast that is mostly upstream or up-and-across.

Slides can start with an upstream cast, with a cast directly across the stream, or anywhere in between.

But what happens when we cast downstream? With the flies downstream of our rod tip, swinging happens. And swinging is inherently different than what I consider glides and slides because of the head position of the streamer. Consider this . . .

Swinging the flies has the head faced upstream and into the currents. (It takes a good bit of line manipulation and some introduced slack to make it be otherwise.) Sure, you can swing your fly across seams, and you might call that sliding. But what I call sliding mostly happens with the streamer’s head facing somewhere between down and across.

Read through the rest of these tactics in the Streamer Presentations Series, and you’ll notice my constant attention to the head position of the flies. Because on most days I get far more eats (not just strikes) with the head faced downstream or across.

Do It

The longer I guide, and the more I pay attention to my own trout fishing, the more I notice trends in the way we work streamers. Almost compulsively, we feel the need to move the long flies — probably too much.

My friend Bill Dell often says, “Don’t take it away from them.” I like that.

Glides and slides are a great way to do it.

Fish hard, friends.

READ MORE : Troutbitten | Category | Streamers

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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com