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Beautiful - casting and the girl. Enforces the reasons I use a double hander whenever possible. If she had a proper Spey line, a double taper, she'd not have to do all that wierd circling of the line to pick it up off the water - good tehcnique, though with a tapered line. A few of the 'sets' appeared as if she might have had a DT on the real when on the smaller, faster flowing river.

Indeed, you need to anchor the line to build energy in the rod. I'm not an expert by any means and I'd like to take some lessons WITH her. The tight river she was on, was similar to the steelhead rivers out west of here, where we used to spend a couple weeks every year. She sure had nice tight loops with that spey rod. Short one too. I've a tendency to drop my tip too soon, opening up the loop - good stuff- think I'll bookmark that video.

De Jaeger - I agree! with several classes - suggestions might be short rods - various wieghts and lines, then Spey Rods - shooting heads and baskets which are popular in the Pacific NorthWest USA, Modern tapered lines and then Double Taper lines. Rod length limits, maybe 15' or 17' - Length of cast and presentation - whatever.

Trouble is, for a proper double taper, water speed, ie: current is necessary. However, I did find a 14' 9/10 weight Sage I built would Spey cast a Double Taper 11 on a flat lake. True to Sage's early long rods, they didn't knwo what it was, wouldn't spey cast nor would it even overhead cast a 9 weight line unless 80' to 90' was out of the rod tip. It would, however, reasonably cast a DT 10 weight line for steelhead on a river. I double it would cast any of the modern tapered lines. My son in law broke it on a bloody Spring Salmon - oh well, small loss (worth about $1,0000-was a nice looking rod though.

True Spey Rods start with Orvis and include Bruce and Walker and some Fenwicks made in England - although I admit that some of the newer ones feel good in the stores. I find Sage still hung up on soft tips - useless for Spey casting.

The reason I use an old 15' Orvis 11 weight "meat rod" with DT line, is the line never has to be stripped in - it's all out - all 120'(on a big river) + leader and tippet - and it's on or in the water fishing while the 'new breed' of long-rod users are stipping and wipping and trying to catch flies and bats. That's another story.

Edited by Daryl_S (06/01/09 04:46 AM)