Streamer Presentations #8 -- The Crossover Technique

Mar 16, 2025

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With episode seven of this Troutbitten Skills Series, we’ve finally come to the point where we’ve covered all the different ways to move a streamer and give it some animation. Now it’s time to put all of that together.

This whole series has been about what motions might sell the presentation. Because how we move the streamer fools the next trout. And there’s such a wealth of options that it can be very helpful to break things down into individual parts.

So we talked about jerk strips, glides, slides, speed leads, lane changes, jigs and head flips. We’ve talked a lot about the position or orientation of the fly in the water. Is it drifting with the current, crossing currents or swinging against them? Is the streamer near the surface or is it deep? And within all these animations, are we moving the fly quick or smooth, and are the motions long or short?

Now, for the last three episodes of this streamer presentations skills series, we’re ready to talk about putting a group of these animations into a system, a mindset, or a framework for fishing your streamer.

In this episode, we introduce the concept of the Crossover Technique, which is all about getting the streamer low in the strike zone and then animating it within a narrow range, being careful not to move the fly out of the strike zone or move it too far. It’s a really fun presentation style, if you can get your brain around the small, often minor animations necessary. The Crossover is also extremely effective, and it results in a much lower refusal percentage than most streamer tactics.

So, we can go out and choose only to swing flies or to strip them cross current — or to slow slide, jerk strip or jig. The point is, each of the presentations we talked about in the previous episodes stands alone as a great way to show the streamer to a trout.

But we also like to spend time combining these presentations — because it’s fun. Because fishing streamers like this is a creative, fluid process of working with what the river gives you and adapting to new situations, moment after moment.

So the real trick with something like the Crossover is to be disciplined enough to stay within your framework while also using your creativity.

My friend, Austin Dando, joins me for a great discussion.

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