The Best Fly Line for Streamers

Buy the Scientific Anglers Sonar Titan Sink Tip in WF5F/S3 if you are fishing streamers on creeks and small rivers. It is a floating line with a type-3 sinking front end, so a weighted fly gets down two or three feet while the belly stays on the surface where you can still control it. If you want the gentlest version of that, the RIO Avid 24ft sinking tip casts like a normal trout line, and on genuinely shallow creeks the floating Frequency Boost is the better answer.

Prices on this page come live from the retailer and are date-stamped under each buy button. We compile manufacturer specifications — sink rates, head lengths and tapers — and do not claim to have tested these lines ourselves.

What a streamer line has to do

It has to turn over a heavy fly. A cone-head Woolly Bugger or a small articulated streamer weighs many times what a size 16 dry weighs, and a standard trout taper with a long fine front end collapses under it. Streamer lines answer this with a short, heavy head — mass concentrated in the first 25 to 35 feet — which is why they feel so different to cast.

It has to get the fly down and keep it down. Trout eat streamers below themselves far more often than above, and current lifts anything buoyant. A sinking tip holds the fly in the strike zone through the whole swing instead of letting it climb out halfway.

And it has to stay controllable. This is why sink tips beat full sinking lines for most trout fishing: with a floating body you can still mend, still lift, and still see where your line is. A full sinking line is deeper and almost unmanageable on a small stream.

The five lines, compared

Picking a sink rate

Sink rates are sold as "type" numbers, and the number is inches per second. A type-3 tip sinks roughly three inches per second, type 6 about six. On a creek with a three-foot run and a four-second drift, type 3 puts the fly a foot or so down by the time it reaches the fish, which is right. Type 6 puts it in the rocks.

Deeper is not better; matched is better. The common mistake is buying the fastest sinking line available and then fishing it on water three feet deep, where it snags constantly and you blame the fly. Buy slow for shallow creeks, type 3 for mixed water, and faster only if you fish deep winter pools or tailwater runs.

What line weight for streamers?

5-weight for creek streamers, 6 or 7 for anything bigger. A 5-weight sink tip on a 9-foot 5-weight rod throws a size 8 or 10 weighted streamer comfortably, and that covers most small-stream trout fishing. Step to a 6 or 7 when the flies get past three inches or you are casting into wind all day.

Do not put a streamer line on a 3-weight. A short heavy head overloads a light rod and the rod cannot recover between strokes. If your creek rod is a 3-weight — and on brushy water it should be, per the small-stream rod roundup — fish unweighted or lightly weighted streamers on the floating line instead.

Line weight and rod weight should match, not be "overlined." Streamer tapers are already built half a size heavy. Deliberately going up another size on top of that makes a rod feel dead. The weight question in general is covered in 4wt vs 5wt fly rods.

Streamers on small water

On a creek, the cast is short and the fly lands hard. You are often making 20-foot casts under branches, which means the head of the line never fully leaves the rod. That favors the shorter heads here — the Cortland 15-foot tip and the Sonar Titan — over long-bellied lines that need distance to load.

Fish the fly across and down, not upstream. A streamer works when it looks like a fleeing baitfish, so cast across the current, let the sink tip pull it down, and strip it back along the seam. On small water the whole swing takes four seconds, which is why slow sink rates are usually enough.

The flies themselves are simpler than the line choice. A Woolly Bugger and a Clouser Minnow in two sizes will cover a season — both are in the creek lure and fly guide and in the best flies for rainbow trout.

The leader matters as much as the line

Short and strong: 4 to 6 feet of 1X to 3X. A long tapered dry-fly leader lets a heavy streamer hinge and tangle, and it lets the fly float up away from the sinking tip you just paid for. Cut it down. With a sink tip you want the fly close to the line, not drifting three feet above it.

Tie it straight to the tip with a loop. No tippet rings, no three-section tapers. If you want the knots, the one you need is in how to tie tippet to leader, and the rest of the rigging is in how to set up a fly rod.

And give the reel a thought. Sink tips are heavier than floating lines and take more room on the spool, so check the capacity before you load one onto a small-arbor trout reel. The options are in the trout fly reel roundup. For the flies that go on the end of it, see the best streamers for trout.