Streamers In Tandem

One variation on rigging two flies is to tie the dropper off the bend of the hook of the point fly. To do this you tie your first fly onto the tippet as normal. Then tie a piece of tippet to the bend of the hook. This can be done with a clinch knot just like you use to tie on the fly through the eye of the hook. Tie on the dropper six to twelve inches below the point fly. This tandem rig is often done with two nymphs, but can also be done with a dry fly and a dropper. A common use of this is the hopper/dropper system. You use a large hopper pattern as the point fly, then tie on a nymph as the dropper. In this instance, you can even use a longer tippet section for the dropper depending on the depth of the water. I’ve tied the dropper three feet below the hopper on certain rivers. The nice thing about the hopper/dropper system is that the hopper acts as a strike indicator. When the trout takes the nymph you will see the hopper go under or pause momentarily. What’s more, sometimes the trout will take the hopper. Or, it will rise to the hopper, refuse to hit the hopper and eat the nymph.

You can set up a similar rig with streamers. This is what I did on my last trip. I tied a large grey and white rabbit fur streamer onto 2X tippet for my point fly. For the dropper I tied on nine inches of 3X tippet to the bend of the point fly using a clinch knot. Then I tied on a bright yellow streamer. This way I was able to present two different colors and sizes of streamers. This system worked quite well. I discovered another advantage to using two streamers. There is usually one streamer which is more visible than the other. You can concentrate on seeing that one. This might be the issue with the trout as well. They may notice the more visible one first, be reluctant to strike it but be willing to strike the one that blends in with the surroundings like a natural minnow or sculpin.

The first fish I caught took the point fly, the large grey and white rabbit fur streamer. It is fun to see these fish dart out of their dark hiding places and vigorously strike a streamer. I then switched the yellow streamer for a black cone head wooly bugger. This is what the second fish hit. These weren’t big fish like I was hoping to catch with these streamers, but they were sure fun to catch. They were 16 to 17 inch browns.