Swing's the Thing

While there's plenty I'm looking forward to about Fall, little excites me more than swinging streamers for amped-up, pissed-off steelhead. I thought I knew a thing or two about "the tug is the drug". But my first mind-blowing grab last October on a Manistee river buck changed all that.

Normally, detecting steelhead strikes is more like finding a fart in a windstorm. I miss tons more than I hit. Not so with swinging. Ka-WHAM! And then the rodeo ride of the first ten seconds of a steelhead fight starts.

But it's more than just the take that intrigues me. Chuck and Duck is fine, when conditions warrant it (ever fished the UP in Spring? Short, deep holes and LOTS of flow mean it's almost the default setting). But there's so little feedback and I just feel less involved. In recent years, I've mostly switched to indicator fishing. It's cool due to all the  issues of managing drift, depth, and other presentation factors. But sometimes its a bit overwhelming.

Enter swinging. Find a good run, select a sink tip that puts you in a reasonable place given conditions, belt out a nice circle spey or double spey cast and you're fishing. Plus, it fits my Fish Fast mentality. Didn't pull one out on the first three drifts? NEXT!

Finally there's the tying aspect. There's a great quote from Ed Ward in the first Skagitmaster, "These flies aren't so much tied as they are engineered." That engineering fastinates me as a tyer. How can I make this fly push water and imitate a baitfish effectively? What colors work for this river? How do I want this fly to behave in the water? That process of continuous improvement absolutely fascinates me. How can I make an inferior fly (like my first efforts) better? How can I make a good fly a great one?

This year's goal is simple - I want to get a steelhead on a swung fly of my design and creation. If I pull that off, I'll be giddy. Will it happen? Who knows, but it will be fun to find out!

-Sean-