What more could an angler ask for? Good looking flies, a two-handed rod and a few shooting heads – and they all happen to be sitting in the tray of a bad-ass jet sled, and that sled happens to be floating on the most ridiculous steelhead river on the planet. More on Gear for the…
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Spey
Spey Casting – Snap T / Circle Spey Basics
It’s spey casting video time. Whitney Gould makes an appearance today to walk us through the basic steps involved in making one of the most useful spey casts out there – the Snap T a.k.a. Circle Spey a.k.a. C-Spey a.k.a. Circle Cast. It’s a great cast that just happens to have a lot of names….
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Switch Rods, Scandi Heads and Polyleaders
In the world of spey fishing there seem to be three types of gear that generate a lot of confusion – switch rods, Scandinavian heads and polyleaders. Here’s our quick-and-dirty, way-oversimplified primer on each of the three. Look down below for a video from an actual expert, with an example of a situation where all…
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Switch Rods and Heads – Sage TCX and Rio Steelhead Scandi
Last weekend at IFTD we told you a little bit about two new products in the world of spey – TCX switch rods from Sage, and Steelhead Scandi heads from Rio. We thought they were both pretty interesting, so we asked George Cook, Pacific Northwest angling stalwart, to make a few casts at the spey…
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Airflo Skagit Switch Heads
We’ve told you in the past about how to cut back Skagit heads to match your switch rods – something we’ve had to do to get a good casting setup for rods like the Scott Fiberhammer or the Sage 5110-4 Z-Axis. Modern Skagit heads (with a real front taper) just weren’t available in lengths that worked well…
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Running Line – Holding Loops
If you’re making long casts with a spey rod and a Skagit-style line system, you need to deal with loops of running line. Skagit heads are short but casts can be long, and shooting 50 feet or more of running line happens all the time. Unfortunately you can’t just strip all that line in and…
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Skagit Master Forum
You know we like spey casting, right? You know about Skagit Master Volume 1, featuring Ed Ward telling you all about his approach to Skagit-style fishing, right? You might even know that Skagit Master Volume 2 is in production, this time featuring Scott Howell giving his take on all things related to Skagitology. Well today…
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Swinging Flies – Cast, Then Step.
Cast, mend, swing fly, take a few steps downriver, repeat. That’s how you fish for steelhead, right? Not necessarily. Michael White stops by in video form today, straight from the Dean River, to tell us a bit about how he likes to present flies to steelhead. The basic idea – rather than stepping downriver after…
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Get the Right Line for Your Spey Rod!
At Alaska West and BC West, we spend a lot of time chasing anadromous fish with two-handed rods. We see this situation all the time: Angler arrives in camp with new spey rod. Angler sets it up with the line that his or her buddy/mentor/favorite author/shop guy/rep/mother-in-law said would work well. Angler fishes it for…
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Sometimes It’s Simple
One of our followers on Twitter recently chimed in with a question for our friend and Alaska West spey instructor Dec Hogan. The question basically boiled down to asking about “the nuances of casting deeper-bend spey rods”. You see, Dec likes rods that are relatively slow and that literally bend all the way through the…
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