10. Guide tips on streamer fishing (10 of 20)

- [Tom] It's always a smart idea to listen to guides, or just watch local anglers fish streamers. Here, Blake Jackson explains his streamer philosophy on the North Platte River in Wyoming.
- [Blake] I think there's, you know, multiple techniques that we use when streamer fishing, but generally with a floating line, really kind of what you're doing, Tom, is idea where you throw it in super tight. And my big preference is to give it two or three good strips off the bank, and then slow it down just a little bit in order to let sink. And really, primarily, because we're using a floating line.
If we were using a sink tip or, you know, like a bank robber line, that sort of thing, we might, you know, strip it a little quicker because we've got some tungsten tipped line to help get some depth to it. But a lot of our fish will sit up in that shallow shelf right off the gate or right out off the bank, and then once it drops off the shelf, it's a little better to let the streamer fall slightly, and get a little bit of depth to it.
And I'm also a big fan of, you know, mending it if need be. I think a lot of folks don't...you know, a lot of anglers don't think about mending a streamer line, but you can often get, you know, a big downstream loop to it that'll accelerate it to a point not allowing the streamer to sink a little bit.
- And a downstream loop throws it parallel to the bank. Makes it more parallel to the bank, closer to the bank.
- Right. Which has some advantages but at times, you know, it also increases your speed, right?
- Yeah.
- So if you're looking for it to sink a little bit, then giving it a little mend and letting it kind of fall isn't a bad thing. And I've been doing more and more kind of vertical streamer fishing if that makes sense, right? I mean, I think, any fishing is a continuous learning process, but letting it fall a little bit, and think more like you were jigging a streamer off the bank where you let it fall off the shelf and get some depth, and then give it some movement.
You know, often I see a weird evolution in streamer fishing where someone's pretty good at it when they're not really good at it because they're so erratic and variant at times, right? And then they get kind of used to it, and they get smooth, and consistent and even. And in a fishery like this where we really don't have sculpins or bait minnows that are real erratic in nature...
Generally, our fish are eating it as a wounded, you know, a wounded baby minnow or another wounded fish so, you know, kind of having the erratic movement to it is even better yet instead of smooth, and even and consistent, you know, kind of variant at...
Like you said, once you find the recipe that seems to work, keep going back to the well and using the same recipe versus, you know, changing something that's working for you.
- Ooh.
- [Man] Oh, nice. That looks like a brown.
- I don't know. Maybe not. Nope, a rainbow.
- No, I don't think so. Rainbow.
- [inaudible] is minnows. We can carry him out.
- Boy, that's...
- That's an effective deal there.
- Yeah. A little bit better fish.
- Yeah, getting bigger.
- Yeah.
- It's bait. ♪ [music] ♪