Many of us who learned to spey cast using Skagit-style systems have never felt that comfortable casting floating lines. There, I said it! Your fearless editor was raised on T-14; I’m really bad at casting even Scandi heads.
These days in the Pacific Northwest, lots of us fish Skagit heads and sinktips most of the time. But on certain rivers at certain times of the year, dry lines work great! The problem is, even if you’re a more versatile caster than yours truly, it can be hard to switch back and forth between Skagit/sinktip and the Scandi and longer-belly line systems that are more appropriate for fishing on or near the surface.
Enter the Rage
Airflo has just come out with a new head called the ‘Rage Compact
‘. It’s a floating head that’s designed to load your rod more like a Skagit head. Simple as that!
We spent some time this fall fishing the Rage Compact, and we think that Airflo has hit the mark with this one.
- It feels much more like a Skagit head – we just made our normal, slow, “raised on T-14” casting stroke and out she went.
- It punches through the wind just like a Skagit/sinktip sytem.
- You can fish tight spots with little to no back-cast room…just like with today’s shorter Skagit heads.
Our buddy Tom Larimer had a lot to do with the design of the Rage Compact. He’s got a lot more detail in a post on his blog about the design of this head – you can check that out right here.
If you’re a Skagit kind of person who’s been looking for a floating line solution, it’s here – and it’s called the Rage Compact.
Here’s our Product Review Policy and FTC Disclosure.
Interesting. I was looking at this line from the flip side. I’m a better Scandi caster who was looking for an easier Skagit-like to cast. Any others like me out there who have tried the Rage?