best fall streamer color « currentseams.com

The trip didn’t start out like I’d hoped. While I was gearing up, I discovered that I’d forgotten my wading staff. (With flows over 1,300cfs, that would have come in handy.) Then, I realized I’d forgotten my streamer reel and line. Since I was dedicating the session to the streamer cause, I lined up with something I had remembered: my integrated full sinker. It was a classic case of, “somehow, it all works out,” because there were so many leaves in the water. By using a full sink and a tungsten-head streamer, I was generally able to avoid vegetation hits.

First cast with a Mickey Finn soft-hackle, and whack! I hadn’t even begun my strip cadence. It was a quartering cast downstream, and as I fumbled for the line, the streamer sank and began to move down and across. That’s when the hit came. It was a lovely holdover brown, about a foot long, and I thought this was going to be the start of a day where you land a pile of fish just by showing up. ‘Twas not to be. I didn’t see another angler hook a fish over two hours, and there were plenty of people out and about on this fine fall day.

The night before, I tied up two old Housy favorites, the soft-hackled Mickey Finn and Black Ghost. This is an old, crappy photograph, but essentialy the flies have a template of marabou tail, then a contrasting marabou hackle and some black Ice Dub for a collar. There’s flash, too; sometimes I use Krystal Flash and sometimes Flashabou. I’ll try to put together a complete recipe and shoot some better photos of the steamers.

A few minutes later, I stuck what I thought was going to be my biggest trout of the year. I’d felt a solid bump on the cast before; I repeated the cast, and the fish did not miss the second time. It sounded and bulldogged and I realized I might have hooked into a trophy brown. When I finally got its head up, surprise! Smallmouth. A good one, too, mid teens and fat, with dramatic fall camo colors. That’s the latest in the season I’ve ever caught a decent smallie on the Hous.

I visited a second mark and managed a courtesy tap, but with the clock ticking I moved to the last spot. This section was moving faster than the previous two pools, and with a well-defined slot I made the decision to switch to the long-leader jigged mini-streamer. Slow going, but I was rewarded with a fat stocker rainbow on my last cast. And that, I thought, is the perfect way to bookend a two-hour streamer set.

When there’s an abundance of leaves in the water, conventional wisdom holds that the best streamer colors are black or white. The logic is easy to understand. Those colors are unlike any that the fish are likely to see from dead vegetation. I find that of the two choices, black provides an even more dramatic contrast than white. Of course, everyone has their personal theory and opinion about streamer colors, and at any given moment, someone can prove yours wrong.

But I don’t really want to talk about color. I want to talk about motion, movement, and presentation. Take a look at this very short clip. It’s an underwater shot of a white micro bugger dancing through a leaf-infested pool.

As you can see, the leaves have a very distinct motion as they move through the water. They slowly tumble and glide. If they move laterally or horizontally, it is at the pace of the current — in this case, somewhere around languid. The streamer moves quite differently. It is faster than the leaves. It jerks, shudders, and sharply rises and falls. Yes, the white helps it stand out. But for me, what creates the greatest differentiation between it and the leaves is its movement.

Something to think about next time you’re out.