Our pal, Jerry French, has teemed up with the folks at Aqua Flies to kick off a series of videos on spey casting tips. And to that, we say, FINALLY! Their first video focuses on the double spey, although does a great job at highlighting an important fundamental of any skagit-style spey cast – sweeping…
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Alaska West
Happy Halloween
Corpses, zombies, rotting flesh, skeletons.. While that might sound like October 31st to most, that sounds more like August in our neck of the woods. Each summer, towards to end of our season at Alaska West, thousands upon thousands of salmon complete their life cycle, littering the banks in an image that more closely resembles…
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Bead Fishing for Trout: Advanced Rigging Tips
We’re back with our third and final installment of our series on advanced bead fishing tips from Deneki team member, Rob Rymph. In case you missed the others, be sure to check them out by clicking right here, and here. Today, Rob offers up a few advanced rigging tips he utilizes at Rapids Camp Lodge…
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Timeless Tips: Managing Running Line – 3 Simple Tips
At Alaska West and BC West, we do a lot fishing with spey rods. There are a bunch of reasons that we like spey fishing – line control, less fatigue, the pure enjoyment of making a good cast, and the ability to cover a lot of water. Spey rods let you cover more water because…
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How To Set Up a Trout Spey Outfit – Video
Trout spey has been growing increasingly popular of late, and for good reason, its super fun! We do a lot of it at our Rapids Camp and Alaska West operations, and fish with more and more anglers each year who are interested in sticking trout on two handers. However, over the last five or so…
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Advanced Bead Fishing for Trout: Matching Bead to Hook Size
Last week we kicked off our master class on advanced bead fishing for rainbow trout with a great post on matching the egg-hatch courtesy of Rapids Camp Lodge guide, Alaska West alum, and certified bead ninja, Rob Rymph. Today, Rob is back with some great advice for choosing the appropriate hook size for the bead…
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How To Fix a Twisted Running Line – Video from OPST
We love mono running lines on our spey and switch rods. However, regardless of your casting ability, or even the type of running line you prefer, some amount of line twist is inevitable. Unlike traditional over head fly casting, the rotational nature of spey casting across multiple planes can cause a great deal of twist,…
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Taking Video to Correct Casting Faults
When it comes to improving your cast, there’s no substitute for practice. Lots of practice. However, without a second set of eyes, it can be difficult to gain an honest image of your own cast on which to improve upon, making ‘practice’ wildly inefficient, often leading to more frustration than improvement. For this reason, we…
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Timeless Tips: Casting Heavy Rigs and Tips – 5 Tips
Whether its heavily weighted flies, split shot ridden nymph rigs, or ‘dredger style’ sink tips, there’s nothing delicate about fly fishing in Western Alaska. We may take the ‘chuck and duck’ a little too literally at times, but we love it! Nonetheless, no matter where you are fishing, if you are planning on fishing heavy…
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Kanektok King Tugs – Video
There’s no doubt that one of the most alluring things about swinging flies is the constant anticipation of that electrifying grab while under tension. After all, as they say, the tug is the drug right? Well, if the tug is the drug, then a tug from a king salmon is the most illicit kind.. Don’t…
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