Sifting through small cap coins is good strategy, as long as the team is great an if it isn't your only strategy. The biggest profits this year were made with ICOS. I invested in the tron ico hodled through the china fud, even after they offered investors their money back and sold a huge portion at 20cents (I bought them at 0.0019), vibehub was also a huge win for me, as well as enjin, storm token and icon. The key is finding the projects early on. Try to look what vc firms invested already, that helps tremendously.
Use telegram communities like Ian Balina, the Bitcoin Party or newer ones like Titan Research, Happy Money Man or Altcoinpicks. You might catch onto something you would have missed otherwise.
Another good strategy is to use ICO Review Spreadsheets, to discover well rated projects