On Saturday 02 March 2002 08:27 am, you wrote: > I own a variety of sink tip lines but have only used them for still water > fishing. Does anybody out there regularly use a sink tip for river > fishing? If so, under what conditions, and what kind of presentation, > fly patterns, line sink rate and ti pl length? Inquiring minds like to know.
Well, unless you live in the PNW the details of how we fish for steelies are not going to interest you, but yes, I use a sink tip all the time, even for trout. Sink tips are useful to present a fly to trout, salmon and bass in flowing water when you want that item down in the water column. Bead-heads and lead weighted bodies get around this by sinking the fly on a longer leader. To fish a sink tip in a river, I use a leader that is 3 to 5 feet long in order to allow the line to sink the fly, a fly will rise up on too long a leader. Then I cast across the stream or slightly upstream, and mend my line upstream almost immediately, so the fly and line will sink, much like a dead drift. I am not concerned about fish taking my fly now. When the fly starts to come across the river, it will rise from the level it has sunken to, exciting the fish that may be following. Most strikes occur then. In PNW terms, this is the "steelhead swing". -- Rob Blomquist Kirkland, WA
