To double my chance

The tide was very high and moving unexpectedly fast yesterday morning. On top of this, strong westerly pushing my line to drift even faster.

On a condition like this, I want my streamer to go deep because, in such a fast flow, fish are less likely to come up higher to intercept a tiny bait fish. It will be just waste of their energy. It is better for them to stay deep and wait something to pass in front of their nose instead.



So, as I was watching my line drifting quickly and dragging my steamers with it, I was thinking about a few different options to make my fly sink deeper to get where fish would be holding.

First, I could jump into my car and go home to bring back an intermediate line.

Second, I could go home and quickly tie a heavily weighted fly using a large tungsten bead or something.

Third, I could add an extra weight on to my leader using tungsten putty which is not only pain to cast in the wind, it keeps coming off while I am casting.



The fourth option was to use a tandem rig, and this was a trick I chose yesterday morning. Casting with two flies can still be tricky especially in a strong wind like we had yesterday and on my short 4 weight rod, but unlike tungsten putty, a dropper will not fly off and more importantly it can catch fish. It can double my chance to hook up.

My trick worked well, and I managed to hook up a few fish until the wind became so ridiculously strong that we decided to go for coffee instead. Interestingly, one small fish took a bigger fly (a dropper) and other bigger fish took a smaller point fly. Both are the same pattern, just in different sizes.