For years I have relied heavily upon sparkle minnows as one of my main confidence streamers. They produce fish and are very easy to see. The high visibility of this pattern gets a lot of attention from fish and its great for beginners learning how to fish a streamer because you can see it so easily. Most importantly, this pattern just catches fish!
My last year working in Montana, I guided ALOT on the Yellowstone. That river became my bread and butter. I had a lot of guest ask me “What do I need to do to catch a big brown trout?” While the browns on that river love grasshoppers, sometimes in the middle of the day throughout August, the dry fly fishing just wasn't that good. I ended up combining methods I learned on other rivers, mainly the upper Madison and the North Platte to figure out a new great way to catch these browns when other methods just weren’t producing.
In the hottest part of summer bug life can be reduced to almost nothing by high water temps. Mayflies, Caddis, and stoneflies are all hunkered down and become unavailable to trout. In the upper Madison as well as many other rivers, fish start foraging for sculpins and baitfish because they are still available to trout unlike the bugs they love to eat. Think about it. In the summer how often is the fishing best in the morning then it slows down in the afternoon? Then as the day winds down and the high heat of the day resides doesn’t the evening fishing usually get good again? Thats what I have found to be consistent across the rockies. Now granted there are always exceptions to this and I hate generalizations when it comes to fishing, but most guides I know would agree with the basic concept of mid day fishing in August to have a high potential for slow bug activity.
Water temperatures controls everything. They dictate a trouts metabolism thereby dictating their eating habits. Water temps also control how active bugs are going to be. This is why during the heat of August fishing is usually best in the mornings and evenings. Water temperatures are increasing and decreasing bug activity. So when fishing isn’t all that great in the middle of the day, the streamer drag comes into play.
A lot of guides on the upper Madison use a method called the drag. Basically we are talking about nymphing streamers underneath a bobber BUT unlike traditional dead drifting methods in actuality we are really talking about dragging our streamers down river. The goal here is simple: fish a streamer on the bottom of the river to target large lethargic fish that don’t have any bug activity to key in on.
Let me elaborate…
While employing the “drag” method (nymphing a streamer) isn’t rocket science it does require some technique. The essential component to doing this technique correctly is constantly downstream mending your line. This keeps your fly fishing on the bottom of the river without getting caught or snagged on the bottom. The other benefit to this down stream mending is that it keeps the anglers line tight, so a lot of the time when the fish eats it, they are already hooked because there isn’t much slack.
The next step for nymphing streamers successfully requires a bit of work from the rower. Basically the rower wants the boat moving slightly faster then the current. If the boat is going the same speed as the current and the angler is upstream of their nymphed/dragged streamer rig, upstream mending, their drift is going to slow down and cause it to sink more and as a result probably get snagged on bottom too much. I know thats hard to picture so let me explain it this way. You are nymphing and dragging a heavy stream downriver. If you are fishing way downstream from yourselves (IE way out in front of the boat like you would a dry fly) you aren’t going to be able to drag it down river. So… one more time on this point: You can’t drag something down river if you are upriver of it! These riggs are heavy, if they are downstream of you, you are constantly going to get snagged on the bottom. We don’t want that. We want to drag them down river. So in order to this an angler needs to be downstream of the their rig. The rower speeding up the boat is crucial, to enable anglers to position themselves donwstream from their rig so they can “drag” it downstream. Theres a reason guides on the Madison call it the “drag” not the streamer dead drift! I’ll circle back around to this in a bit!
Most of the streamers I have confidence in nymphing are heavy streamers. I am trying to fish these heavier streamers on the bottom of the river slowly. If we didn’t want them moving slowly we wouldn’t be nymphing them. We would be stripping and retrieving them in a more traditional manner. But thats not what we are talking about here. The whole point of this rig is targeting big lethargic fish during the hot part of the day. Theres not a lot going on bug activity wise so we are trying to hit these same fish in the face with a slowly fished streamer dragging/bouncing off the bottom of the river. So lets back up to my previous point regarding the rower slightly increasing the speed of the boat. Combining the down stream mending with the boat being sped up/pushed downstream we are able to allow the streamer to fish along the bottom of the river without getting it snagged. So from an anglers perspective the person fishing in the front of the boat usually has their rig somewhere around the middle of the boat, somewhat even with the oars, while the angler in the rear of the boat has their rig behind the boat. The boat is being pushed down stream dragging our streamers downriver, so once again, if your rig is downstream in front of you instead of upstream behind you, you are dead drifting, not dragging! I know that sounds weird, I have frequently had to coach people through this but trust me it works. Now obviously you will get some snags doing this as with any type of nymphing but this method seems to produce more fish and less snags then a traditional drag free drift. I can’t emphasize this point enough. Its the drag! NOT THE DEAD DRIFT! I have tinkered with nymphing streamers on rivers from the Rockies to the west coast and this has always been the most productive way to do it. Yeah keeping the streamer fishing and not snagging is a major plus to this method but above all doing it in this manner has overwhelming produced more fish for me then any other way of nymphing streamers, which is why its called “dragging”.
This method absolutely worked in the heat of the day and it frequently would produce the biggest brown trout of the day for us. Eventually I combined this streamer dragging method from the upper Madison, with inside out nymphing tactics used by guides on the North Platte.
I noticed summer after summer that a lot of people seemed to ignore the middle of the river on the Yellowstone. Just pounding bank after bank no matter the productivity….that was just how most people seemed to fish. In the heat of August sometimes those fish just didn’t seem to be eating all that much from 11:30 to 4:00 or later. Pretty typical for most rocky mountain rivers in the hottest parts of summer. I then tried more and more to nymph the middle of the major runs that were often ignored by most anglers. I knew fish were in these runs and it made sense that if the banks weren’t fishing well we should try something else.
Fishing inside out is a way to fish the middle of a river. Basically putting your boat on the side of the river so you can fish towards the middle without floating over the fish you are targetting. This is the main way guides on the North Platte fish. I instantly started catching fish this way on the Yellowstone. Even fishing dry flies in this manner. Running as long of drifts as possible by starting at the top of the runs and trying not to recast till the very end of the run. I quickly realized that back rowing runs on the Yellowstone is not as easy as it is on the Platte, but it was doable. I would start on the side of a run, then hold a drift down the entire run. After this I would row back upstream to the top of the run, slide my boat out a little further to the middle then start another long drift down the entire run. I would break the run into a grid and keep running lines from inside out till I found the line or area that would produce fish. So again all I was doing was running long lines, starting on the side of the run and working my way drift by drift further out to the middle until I found the sweet spot of runs that would consistently produce fish. The nice thing about putting in this leg work (more like arm work in a boat) is once you figure out the run you kind of know what line to take for it the next time you float through it. Holding a line with your boat and skall or crab stroking to hold these lines is vital! Don’t let the current push you off course, HOLD THAT LINE, sometimes having your boat even 2 feet over in the river can make a difference. I had a lot of guides look at me like I was crazy for back rowing so much, but I had so much success doing this I couldn’t stop, I wanted people to catch those fish!
Now I know we are talking about nymphing streamers in this post but while we are talking about fishing the Yellowstone in this manner I would like to mention that I used this same inside out technique with dry droppers to great avail on this river. Had to mention that, but now back to nymphing streamers!
Eventually I started employing the upper Madison’s streamer dragging technique with this inside out method. It quickly became my go to tactic for big brown trout on the Yellowstone. I would usually give a guest a 7 weight with a sparkle minnow and a nymphed tied off the back of it with a very large bobber. Since we were nymphing/dragging streamers a bigger bobber worked better then a smaller one. The smaller bobbers would be getting dragged around too much and I noticed guest had a hard time differentiating between the streamer dragging along the bottom and a fish eating it. The larger bobbers seemed to make it easier for people to recognize a take or eat. The other nice thing about this method was the eats were usually significant, almost violent. It was fairly easy for people to know if they had a fish on. A lot of the time people wouldn’t even need to set, the fish would just be on and off to the races. This was great for beginners. I could take out complete beginners and they would come back to the shop of pictures of big browns. It was awesome. It was especially pleasing because during the heat of the day when most people seemed to think fishing wasn't that great we would be cranking away at big browns. I had some of the biggest bends I have ever seen in a 7 weight on the Yellowstone that summer. I have since then applied these tactics on other rivers to great success.
The next thing I began experimenting with was a small nymph trailed off the back of the nymphed streamer. I started thinking that this streamer nymph rig was like fishing a Wendy’s Baconator with a side of fries behind it. The streamer being the Baconator and the trailing nymph a french fry. A lot of times it seemed nymphing these sparkle minnow really got a lot of fish’s attention but not everyone wanted to eat an entire Baconator. I noticed that we would have obviously have a fish nibble at it but they didn’t really eat it. These short strikes led me to adding the trailer fly. If the trout wouldn’t eat the streamer they would eat the nymph trailed off the back of it. The weird thing was, a lot of the time we would have just been fishing the same trailed nymph but on a dry dropper rig or a normal two nymph set up and wouldn’t have caught anything on it. But when we put it behind a stream drug downstream they would eat it, and on top of that, it was usual an above average sized trout. It was easy to conclude that the streamer was getting these fish attention and it consistently enticed bigger fish into eating. I usually would trail a lighting bug, pheasant tail, hares ear, or any kind of small basic nymph behind the sparkle minnow. The most important part of the equation was the sparkle minnow and getting people to drag it downstream. As August rolled on I relied more and more upon this method. I would come back with great pictures of big browns and was always asked “what’d it eat?” I kept preaching “JUST DRAG A SPARKLE MINNOW DOWN RIVER"!” Everyone would laugh. Eventually I showed a couple of friends how I was having so much success with this technique, and quickly we were all doing on our guided trips.
Throughout the year I will use this technique but now that I primarily guide on the North Platte, I find myself fishing this way primarily in the summer once again when fishing has slowed down in the middle of the day and we find ourselves itching for a big trout. Thats the cool thing about it, when other more traditional methods stop producing this usually is a good way to kill an hour and still get some big fish to the boat, while we wait for the dry fly fishing to get good again!
As much as I tried nymphing tons of different streamers the Sparkle Minnow always came out as the winner. Nymphing these bright streamers always seemed to get us good fish! I also tied up small olive and white dali llama’s or sculpzillas but day after day the sparkle minnow seemed to work the best. The light green color Montana Fly Company calls sculpin has for years always worked the best for me. The other colors, brown/yellow and silver/black work too but the green sculpin color has always been one of the most productive streamers for me. The only draw back to nymphing sparkle minnows (as with any streamer) is the weight of the fly. It always becomes more of a flop from one side of the boat to the other then a pretty cast. Its not a graceful way to fish. Just do what you can to get the rig where you need it. 7 weights and ten foot rods make fishing these rigs way easier.
My last season in Montana I ended up guiding a lot of our head guides repeat guest. They had been fishing with really great guides on the Yellowstone for years and expected a lot. In the middle of the day I would give them my 7 weight with this nymphed streamer rig and tell them to flop it into the middle of the river because the dry fly fishing wasn't really happening and we might as well try to catch some nice browns while we wait for it to pick back up. First thing that would happen is they would say “Ive heard about nymphing streamers, but Ive never done it.” I would smile and tell them we should try it for bit since its the middle of the day, its really hot out and we should try to hit big brown trout in the face with this rig and see if they eat it! A couple minutes later they would usually fret (and justifyably so) that the rig was exhausting to cast. I would then explain to them that its not a graceful way to fish…”Just flop it in there!” It would almost always produce a nice sized brown fairly quickly and then they would be convinced that this wrecking ball method 100% works! While it is a chaotic messy way to fish the productivity of it was undeniable. I had a lot of guest ask me if we could keep fishing this way, to which I would always happily oblige. The hard part was convincing guest who had a lot of experience to try this method since it was unconventional and a pain to cast. I could easily get beginners to do it because beginners usually will do whatever you suggest for them to do, and I’ll admit it was a terrifying summer of having streamers thrown really close to my head by amateur anglers, but I didn’t care because they would be catching really nice fish! My point here is that this is a loud obnoxious way to fish, your dragging streamers downriver under a bobber. Its not sexy but hey it works and when you’ve tried everything else, give it a whirl and see what happens.
I thought it was so cool to combine the streamer drag method of the upper Madison with the inside out grid breakdown of runs used by veteran guides of the North Platte. I started looking at the Yellowstone in a completely new way. Targeting water I never saw anybody else fish and finding that a lot of those spots were not only productive but frequently had really nice sized fish in them. This method works great in white water too. On lower sections (Springfield to Big Timber) of the Yellowstone where there is considerable gradient this is especially effective. There were many runs where this worked better then anything else I tried. Im not saying I invented the wheel, I didn’t invent this, I just tried it and quickly realize HOLY SH*T this works well but I never saw other people do it unless they were on the Madison. That is one of my favorite things about fishing, taking tactics and methods from one anywhere and seeing if they work somewhere else. I try to learn something new every time I go fishing. Thats the beauty of fly fishing you are always learning! I still use the method successfully on the North Platte and love showing people how great it is for getting big fish when you find yourself at 2:00 in the afternoon and nothing else seems to be producing!
My take on Sparkle Minnows
If I haven’t sold you yet on Montana Fly Companies Sparkle Minnows I don’t know why your still reading this. Now they are undoubtedly many guides confidence pattern but I do have some issues with the commercial produced versions. Mainly the hook gap and lack of movement from the fly. Alright lets start with the hook gap. Below is a picture of a store bought sparkle minnow (no not store bought cheeseburger).
