During a large part of our summer, we’re fortunate to be able to target trout using one of our favorite means of all time – with mouse patterns. When its good, its great, and can make for some fast-paced, highly visual fun, at times selecting some pretty quality fish.
That said, it doesn’t select all the fish, and while fishing a mouse fly is super fun, more often than not a well presented streamer (mainly sculpins in our neck of the woods) will catch more fish at the end of the day.
So how do we decide between the fun factor of a mouse and effectiveness of a streamer? Give ’em the ol’ one-two punch – The Mouse/Sculpin combo. Here’s how it works..
Whether fishing from the boat ‘drift boat style’ down the main river, or walking smaller side channels, one angler rigs up with the mouse, while the other rigs up with the sculpin. The angler rigged with the mouse always gets the first crack at the fish, or fishy looking lie, while the other bats cleanup with the sculpin. If fishing from the boat, this means the angler with the mouse will take the front of the boat while drifting while the sculpin rigged angler will take the back.
This allows the mouse fly to target the most aggressive fish first (thus the most apt to take a mouse pattern), while the streamer can follow up hopefully fooling the more wary, and often larger fish in the lie. Not only is it a productive way to target trout on our river, but its also a heck of a lot of fun, and something we do a lot of!
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