Fly-Fishing:Setups for Swinging to Steelhead & Brown Trout

The setup was my last step to learning how to actually catch fish. While I am still learning new ideas and methods for catching different species of fish, it is important to know without the right setup your probability for hooking up goes down significantly. There’s tons of fly-fishing techniques and they all have their nuances such as euro-nymphing, spey, wet-fly, dry-fly, but for today we’re going to focus on materials needed for swinging. There is a lot of overlap between these techniques and starting with one can be very beneficial.

What You Need

Rod: I recommend a 6-10 weight rod depending on the size of the water. I use a 6wt on small Lake Ontario tributaries and 8wt on larger waters such as the Salmon River in Pulaski. Most outfitters will have a selection of these sizes.

Reel: A large arbor reel to match the rod size.

Line: Weight forward floating line to match the reel and rod size.

Leader & Tippet: Usually anything over 7.5 ft tapered leader works great. You can buy premade leaders from any fly-shop or make your own, tapering down usually to 3x or 4x depending on fish size. I typically use 4x premade leaders for steelhead and browns, but I have tied longer leaders for when I fish water that is deep and fast (<4.5ft holes).

Fly Selection: This is the fun part. You can dive into as much science as you want when selecting a fly for swinging. Color, shape, size, turbidity, temperature, geology, all play a role in the fish’s will to bite. I recommend starting with basic black or white streamers such as, wooly buggers or zonkers to test your mettle on the stream. As you become more knowledgeable about the stream, you can select flies that are larger, heavier, brighter or vice versa. For example, in turbid water use brighter contrasts and bigger flies, so the fish can see the fly for longer. Or for steelhead choose a pink sparkly fly to invite a reaction bite. Check out the brown below that even ate one of my first attempts at tying a multicolor wooly bugger! (It’s ugly but it worked)

For more information on how to swing. Check out my blog on swinging technique here!