WHY YOU SHOULD BE SPEY CASTING
Author: The Meat Eater
Published: January 26, 2023
A new article from MeatEater about why you should be spey casting while fly fishing. Check it out!
“There are a lot of reasons that people take up fly fishing. It’s an art with its own graceful casting methods and elegant techniques that take a seemingly limitless amount of challenge and advancement in skill in order to master. There’s dry fly fishing where you learn about matching the hatch and how to drift a floating fly serenely as possible on the surface of the river. There’s nymphing where you learn how to capitalize on a fish’s natural feeding instincts and how and where to present a fly beneath the surface of the water. Then there’s streamer fishing where you use large and gaudy fly patterns to trigger predatory fish like large trout, pike, and muskie, into smashing your fly like angry aquatic juggernauts.
Every one of these fly-fishing techniques is a step you can take towards becoming a more complete fly angler and once learned, many believe themselves to be true masters of the art. However, there is another fly fishing technique that is often overlooked by your average fly fisherman. A technique that combines the best aspects of dry fly fishing, streamer fishing, and nymphing, that is an art form all its own. It’s a type of fly fishing that can take an angler’s game to an entirely different level and open them up to a whole new fly fishing world—I’m talking about Spey casting.
What Is Spey Casting?
Spey casting is a fly-fishing method that employs long fly rods and heavy shooting lines that allow an angler to cast great distances and cover massive amounts of water. The method lets you present your fly at a variety of different depths with control and precision, helping you find and catch fish on the fly that would be otherwise difficult to hook on your average fly fishing equipment.
Spey rods are long 11-to-16-foot dexterous fly rods with thick and heavy cores that are meant to be fished with two hands. Unlike traditional fly rods that are cast over the shoulder with fast hauls and hard throws to achieve distance, Spey rods are cast with long rolling sweeps that pull the line through the water, bending the rod and allowing you to fire the fly line a great distance with little to no effort. Fly reels and lines for Spey rods are specially designed to balance with the rod, with the fly lines coming in a variety of styles. These lines have heavy bellies and different thick shooting heads which can be mixed and matched depending on what flies you are using and what species of fish you are trying to catch.”
The full article can be found here.
Photo Credit: Original Author
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