Hey kcw--- what's so important about learning to spey cast?
Quick background: I've fly-fished for steelhead since 1975. I got my first double-hander in 1976 (14 foot cane Sharpes "Scottie") . I have a closet full of doubler-handed rods, ranging in length from 12 to 20 feet. I have a full collection of brass-faced Hardy Perfects I run on these rods, ranging in size from 2 1/2" up to 4 1/2". I spend 12 months a year chasing steelhead with a fly. I just got back from my 35 th consecutive year of going up north to the Skeena. I had a good trip despite all the floods and high water you may have read about
Why am I wasting your time telling you all this?
Because over the last 35 years I've caught piles and piles of steelhead with double-handed rods and what????.... I've never spey-casted in my life. Truth be told, I think it is a goofy, thoroughly inefficient way of delivering a fly into a river and I'm mystified why people would even want to learn how to cast that style.
So that explains why I posed the question “why?”
Here's a story for you: back when the Thompson River was open for business I developed my own way of catching Thompson steelhead on dry flies. It was a simple technique and could be pretty effective: I took a Hardy Silex, put a WF floating line on it, and quarter-casting a big bushy dry fly downstream, would then flick the reel into free-spool mode and let the fly go on off downstream. Sometimes I'd hook fish under the rod tip on my dry fly. Sometimes I'd hook fish 50 meters downstream from where I made the cast. Lots of fun (if there weren't other people in the hole who of course got pissed off if I hooked a fish in water downstream of where they were standing, water they hadn’t even fished yet).
One day I was working a "player" with a dry fly. I had her up to the surface three times but couldn't get her to suck down the fly. I was showing a friend of mine what a "player" was all about. Sometimes they were easy. Sometimes you had to work them a bit. This one was being finicky.
So just as I was about to put a smaller pattern on, a guy shows up on the other side of the river. I knew this guy--he was a big-time fly-line developer, big-mouth promotional type; you could probably say he and his company brought the word "spey" into the market forefront, popularized the concept to the point where somehow the phrase "spey fishing" became interchangeable with the phrase "fly fishing for steelhead with a long rod".
In reality, "spey casting" was just one of many casting styles developed in Scotland for fishing rivers with limited back-casting room. Somehow, all that got lost in the wash when this guy showed up. Somehow, this guy's company with its heavy-hitting advertising budget usurped all those other casting styles and the end result was that people were left presuming that if you fished a long rod, you just absolutely had to learn how to spey cast because long rods were spey rods and you were dead in the water without a teacher or a video to show you how to do it.
Anyway, this guy in question steps into the river and starts his "spey" thing. The sun was dropping and it literally looked like someone was shelling the water around him. Huge whooshing noises and splashes everywhere; exploding water like he was horse-whipping it to death.
I reeled up my line and started back for my truck. My friend said WTF, are you going to walk away from a Thompson fish? I said yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do because if that cracker sees me hook that fish he'll be in this spot with 100 of his closest spey buddies tomorrow and they'll all be "spey casting" with that goofy ridiculous style of theirs and it'll push whatever fish are in along the bank out into the middle of the river and that’ll be the end of this hole for a week
So that took place about 10 years ago. Last week I was standing on the Skeena, watching three guys "spey cast". They were all clients of a good friend of mine who was guiding them in his jet boat. I found out later--one was from Boston, the other was from New York, and other was from Pittsburgh. Each one of these guys was thrashing the water to a froth, pounding out their flies well over one hundred feet into the river. If the fly landed 70 or 80 feet, they'd mouth a cuss word, rip the line back off the water for their "D" anchor, then with lots more commotion, they'd punch yet another world-record cast out into the Skeena.
When they came ashore I asked the magic question--so, how'd you guys do? One fish in five days was the response......
That night I talked to my friend who guided these guys. After a drink or two I said: so what's up with this spey casting? It was completely obvious to me they were over-casting the fishy water ----why do they try and pound the fly out into the middle of the river on every cast like that?
His response----he truly didn't know. He acknowledged they were all "seasoned" fishermen, they'd been on the Skeena and her tributaries before, and this is the way they wanted to cast. In the same breath he told me that he tells his clients who don't spey cast that they should be prepared to cast 30 to 50 feet further then normal if coming into a hole that a group of spey casters has just fished though.
Footnote: every fish I hooked on the Skeena last week was within 30 feet from shore. Several were hooked just dangling the fly downstream from my casting position. All my casts were simple over-head casts, perhaps 50 - 70 feet max. If I had trees behind me, I resorted to what's known as a "tower cast" (easy to do with a long rod) Occasionally I used a roll-cast if I had limited back-casting room (depending on the line I was using) In that case, I resorted to what might be called a spey cast (a “D” fomation with an anchor) , but once I had-back-cast room again, I returned to my normal over-head casting style. One movement to set it up, one movement to fire it back out into the river. Simple.
Once you understand how to load a rod with the grains of your line and what it feels like when it’s loaded, you could be over-head casting in 20 minutes. The rest is just keeping the fly wet until sooner or later, something takes the rod out of your hands.
When that happens, you won’t be spey casting or spey fishing. You’ll be fishing.
I make all my own rods: here's the orientation of a reel seat that makes over-head casting a breeze.
