Today I switched up my presentation a bit to suit the low, clear river conditions by sizing down my fly and tippet to see if the old saying might pay off. The general rule is that a smaller fly is best in low/clear river conditions and a larger fly for higher/stained water. In the past 5 years I’ve been most successful with marabou spey flies or rabbit strip leeches on the local waters that I fish, but in the last 3 weeks I’ve had limited success with my “go to” flies. Last night at the vise I decided to tie up some more tradition style steelhead patterns, and after fishing them today I’ll have to say that I will be fishing them more often now that I have some confidence in their effectiveness. One small steelhead took a variation of a “green-butt skunk”, and a very large brown took a fly similar to Randall Kaufmanns “freight train”.
