Top 5 Streamers

[midnightangler]

Doug McKnight's home invader is one of my personal favorites for spring creeks and freestones. In dirty water it is hard to beat a size 2 black sculpin pattern. The specific pattern doesn't matter as long as it has a big spun deer hair head.

For tailwaters that hold really big brown trout I go big and fish 8"-10" bucktail deciever / gamechanger patterns almost exclusively. Fish under 20" do not eat these flies very often, so this is a bad strategy on many rivers.

Check out Bob Popovics book "Flye Design" if you get interested in tying with bucktail. IMHO the approaches described in that book produce prettiest and most effective streamers that can be tied.

 

[AndyP]

Even though so many streamers have been picked or named....I really really want to see NightStalkers list.....

 

[pete41]

Fly-Swatter wrote:
Troutbert: Are you sure "Parmachenee Belle" isn't code for something dirty?

thought it meant hooker-what's wrong with that ?

 

[jifigz]

My top 5 all species streamer list is as follows:

Woolly bugger
Clouser minnow
Deceiver
My own bunny strip streamer creation thing
Circus Peanut

 

[Fly-Swatter]

pete: Beautiful hooker.

Great minds? Na.

 

[bruch]

Smallmouth:
1: Murdich Minnow
2: Feather Game Changer (any white changer)
3: Jack Vilcock's Roamer
4: Bart-o-minnow
5: Shimmering Minnow
6?: Home invader

Trout:
1: Circus Peanut (the way Russ ties it)
2: Sex Dungeon
3: Sparkle Minnow
4: Home Invader

 

[shakey]

1.hornberg
2.black ghost
3.doc sprately
4.mickey Finn
5.pass lake

Blacknosed dace,and generic bucktails are fun!

 

[Hook_Jaw]

1. Black Zonker
2. Circus Peanut
3. clouser minnow
4. double deceiver
5. pouty minnow

 

[Prospector]

I love to fish streamers and most days I’ll have one tied on for at least a little while and sometimes the entire day. As I listed above, I use older patterns and am unfamiliar with these large full figured streamers that many of you have mentioned. I looked up pictures of some of them and certain ones almost look like they are jointed.

I’ve actually been scaling back my streamer size in recent years to encourage more hook ups (not sure if that is working but that was my motivation). My question to those of you who use flies like Circus Peanut, Montana Mouthwash, slump buster, etc. are you after really a few really big fish or are you getting good numbers of fish on those large flies?

I say that because I’m focused on lots of strikes. To me fishing with streamers is like Grouse hunting where the flush is the reward, a bagged bird is a bonus. I measure Streamer fishing by the amount of big wallops and as a bonus you catch every 5th or 6th one. My best day in the last few years was 52 on streamers (but that was a once in a lifetime type of day where the hookup rate was about 1:2). At one point I landed fish on 11 straight casts.

So for those of you throwing the big stuff, are you getting lots of strikes or just a few monsters? It’s not uncommon for smaller fish to attack large bait so that’s what I’m curious about.

 

[Hook_Jaw]

I catch a lot of trout if i use a smaller pattern I catch way less on a big pattern but way bigger trout usually. Someday's you miss a lot of trout
they short strike, miss, etc some days I don't miss hardly any varies I'm after big trout so I mostly use really big streamers in low light conditions or mice after dark.

 

[Prospector]

I saw a speaker one time, and I can’t remember who, that said an angler goes through 4 phases. First they just want to catch a fish, then they want to catch lots of fish in a day. In phase 3 they want to catch a big fish and phase 4 is when the angler wants to catch lots of big fish in a day.

Sadly I have not progressed beyond phase 2. However it’s clear a fair number of people on this site have conquered phase 4 and that is really tough to do. Kudos to those of you willing to make the commitment.