Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Tandem Streamer Rig

Last weekend I was watching an episode of The New Fly Fisher on PBS at some unholy hour that my 1 year old son decides to awaken most mornings.  On this particular episode, the host (some guy with a Canadian accent) was fishing for Largemouth and Smallmouth on some river in Canada.  He started off fishing deer hair frogs and poppers but eventually switched over to a streamer pattern.  I think at this point my son must have needed a diaper change so I missed what happened next but when I returned, all I heard was "He got the front fly."  Now I new the guy was throwing a streamer so my first thought was "What in the world of Canadian bacon and maple syrup are you talking about?"

The gentleman then went into an explanation that a tandem streamer rig was the go-to set-up on this particular river system for these particular species.  At that moment, the room must have lit up because a light bulb went off above my noggin.  The host then showed an up close look at his rig which included a seven foot leader that connected to a heavily weighted streamer pattern with about 2 feet of tippet tied from the bend of the hook to the next streamer that was smaller and lighter.  See the picture below for a visual representation.  The host went on to explain that the tandem streamer rig was to imitation schooling baitfish or to entice a fish with two different sizes or even species of baitfish.



Upon hearing this revolutionary idea, my next thought was "What in the heck have I been doing for the last 13 years of fly fishing for bass?"   It was a moment that made me question all that I had ever done in terms of throwing zonkers and woolies at bass.  To be honest, it made me feel kind of stupid and unimaginative.  But that's when I started to consider all of the possibilities and combinations of flies that I could throw at bass in the coming weeks to make up for all the time that I have seemingly lost.  I started to fascinate about double wooly combinations, a zonker trailed by a wooly, a sculpin-type fly with a muddler minnow chasing it down.

After I wiped the drool from my mouth and the drool from my son's mouth (he's teething), I started to resort back to my pragmatist way of thinking.  I wanted to see what others had done with a dual streamer rig and if there were any practical combinations that others had employed.  My internet searches led me to many results but the links below seemed to have the best information and tips.  Many of these articles describe how to go after trout with dual rigs, but the approach would seemingly be the same for bass.  I hope you find them useful and if you don't employ a dual streamer approach, I hope you give it a shot.  If you do, email me or leave a comment below and let me know pros and cons of the set-up.  I plan to give this rig a shot in the very near future and write about my findings.  Good or bad, you will hear about this again and hopefully it can help us both put some more fish in our hands.

http://1source.basspro.com/index.php/component/k2/67-fly-fishing/2959-how-to-fly-fish-tandem-streamer-rigs






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