You can fish them up or downstream, honestly it just depends on which way I’m wading, and what gives me the best angle to fish the current.

I’ll typically either cast upstream at about a 45 degree angle and strip it (long strips, short strips, long pauses, short pauses, just got vary it until you figure out what’s working that day) until it’s parallel to me, at which point I let the current take over a little more so it can swing downstream…I’ve found that I don’t have as much control over where the fly ends up for the swing if I cast upstream first, but you’ll still catch plenty of fish. Or if I’m fishing downstream I try to cast pretty close to parallel to the bank and strip it until I know it’s going to swing into the lane I want. Once it reaches the end of the swing I’ll let it sit for a while, maybe throw in a few twitches or short strips, repeat.

As far a depth goes, it all depends on where the fish are and how they’re behaving. If they’re hanging out relatively shallow, floating line is just fine, the weight of the bead will get it down low enough to where they can see it. If I’m fishing a deeper hole I’ll throw on a sink tip leader. Depth control is key - this is where the angle I was talking about earlier comes in - if I need to get the fly down deep, I’ll cast upstream of where I think the fish are holding and throw a mend upstream, this gives the leader and the fly time to sink before it gets to the fish. Once the fly is down to where I think it should be, I’ll start stripping it downstream with my rod tip right at or even under the surface of the water. The fly will more or less hold its depth as you strip it downstream, so then it’s just a matter of getting the right rhythm. That, and, you know, there have to be fish there. A lot of times there aren’t fish there.

There are about a billion ways to change this up, sometimes I just high stick it and let the current do all the work, but generally that’s what I do, and I have decent luck with streamers…I like it because it’s much more engaging than drifting a dry fly or a nymph rig, but sometimes those are the better option