[P2] A Recipe for a Consistent Trout Spey Cast

Learning a Spey cast is a journey, as anglers try to improve their cast.  After gaining proficiency at the elements of the cast it is time to begin the process of improving the cast, which will require some attention to detail.  In this blog entry, I describe my journey to consistency and my own personal approach to improving consistency.  I do this to provide other anglers with motivation and ideas for how to make their casting more consistent.

Rick Williams, my casting coach, noted that my line wasn't laying out straight, which was something I had noticed but didn't worry about.  Rick explained it meant my rod tip wasn't traveling a straight path.  I wasn't sure why that was nor how it might be fixed, but I began to notice it.

On a fishing trip to the Salmon River near Stanley, ID, a beautiful place to fish, my buddy Joe took a video of my cast.  In the video, you can see I indicate the cast hooked to the left.  The cause is my hands are too far outside my body and then pulled back into my body during the cast.  This results in an odd casting plane and a rod tip that doesn't track straight.  The odd plane causes a loss of power, but my hands were working well enough I had plenty of power for this cast.  My bottom hand is pulling to the left faster than my top hand, causing the rod tip to travel to the right compared with the direction of the line, resulting in a hook.

Before I started using a trout Spey, there were only a few days a year to work on the kinks, which was not enough time.  After I started using a trout Spey, I was fishing with it several times a week, providing plenty of time to fix my cast.  Now, how do I use that time to make my cast consistent.

I began with trying to straighten out my cast.  If I didn't set up consistently every time then it seemed reasonable that my cast would not be consistent.  Here is how I tackled it.  I was fishing Pyramid Lake on a bluebird day -- no clouds, not a scintilla of breeze, clear water, and lockjaw Lahanton Cutthroat Trout.  Boring.  

The rest of the narrative will be talking from the point of view of casts with the right hand in the top position on the grip.  If I was going to check my cast for straight then it made sense to be certain of the target line.  To be consistent, I decided to explicitly point my right foot at a target on the far bank. I put my left foot a few inches behind that to lock my hips and eliminate rotation.  Now my body and brain know exactly where I am aiming.

After I made the cast, I lined up the butt of the rod with my right foot so that the tip of my rod was pointed at the intended target.  The cast actually went about 20 degrees left of my target line.  Hmmm.  That surprised me.  I tried it again and the same result.  My hands were still coming from the outside and across my body.  This meant my alignment would be poor, my D-loop would not have time to form well, and I was losing power as my fire direction was different than the direction of the loop energy.  OK then.  I had something to work on.

After a couple of hours of working at the consistency of my alignment, my cast began to straighten out.  More remarkably, my loop tightened up, my line speed increased, and I had more distance.  Just like that my casting outcome was much better because my alignment was better.  

Over the next few weeks, I made a number of small changes and my casting continued to improve.  I'll not go through all of those details but rather will describe my current process for cast consistency.

*  Do not hurry.  Many Spey casting problems are caused by going too fast.  All the good casters I've spoken with deliberately slow down when they are starting to struggle.  

*  Consistent Stance: Right foot point at the target to make sure the brain and body are in harmony.  Move left foot slightly behind to prevent turning.  

*  Keeping the hands in the box.  Some wag once said Ed Ward could cast in a phone booth.  This is key to consistency as the more precise the motions, the easier it is to keep them consistent.  I'll discuss anchor set consistency shortly but now the challenge is to sweep consistently while keeping my hands in the box.  At the end of the sweep, my hands need to be in a good firing position -- there are several videos and books to help and a few recommendations can be found here.  Breaking this down into parts:

1. Make sure the rod tip is on the water after the anchor set every single time.  Not on the water one time and a foot above the water next time.  Every single time it is on the water at the end of the anchor set.
2. The top hand should grip the rod handle lightly if at all and the bottom hand should be holding the knob.  As a reminder, this is my checklist and yours may be different.  The rod must be held lightly to allow the hands and rod to work together to make a good cast.  
3. The hands are crossed at the end of the anchor set.  Tom Larimer has a different set of ideas worthy of consideration.  I'll describe my approach but be aware that Larimer has some ideas for fixing the problem of a blown anchor that can hound a caster using these shorter lines.  Whatever your approach make sure to be in the position consistently every time.
4. I focus on starting my sweep with my right hand, the left-hand remains in place until the rod passes the middle of my body.  This is a marker for me.  As my right-hand aligns with my foot -- the point at which my rod has passed my target line -- my left-hand motion of push out and help with the rod tip path begins.  
5. My elbow stays tight to my body but I lift it up as needed for the casting demands.  My elbow does not fly away from my body.  
6. At this point, my left-hand and right-hand are moving smoothly into the firing position.  My left hand will be in the middle of the body and right hand is in the phone booth close to my shoulder.
7. If everything has gone well, an easy pull with the bottom hand will shoot line out at a remarkable speed.  It takes a while to get used to this much line speed with so little effort by the bottom hand.  

*Check the outcome.  Were there problems with the cast?  Was it noisy?  Did you blow the anchor?  Was it straight?  Was it low energy?  If there were problems, try to understand what went wrong and work correction into your casting routine.

Videos of your cast will help diagnose and correct faults.  Part of the self-diagnosis is to learn the common problems and their causes in order to find your markers to make consistent casts.  As your consistency increases, your results improve and you will be able to recover from a casting funk more quickly.

I hope this helps.  Good luck out there.  

[P2] Two-Handed Casting for Stillwater

The Agony and The Ecstasy would be a good title for a Spey Casting movie, as an aspiring Spey Caster must overcome the mechanical challenges of making a cast and the configuration challenges of matching the line to the rod's capability, all in the context of some fishing scenario.  Some of these issues were discussed in a pair of blogs posted here and here.  It can be frustrating putting that first Spey system together and sometimes even the shops get it wrong.  It can also be frustrating to put a cast together because of all the parts and their interdependence.  But when it all comes together and you launch that cast straight, true, and fast to the target the ecstasy is unbelievable, making the agony of learning it worthwhile.

I'll also note that a coach can be of great assistance to help you get started.   Clubs, local fly shops, Spey Claves are all possibilities for finding help to get going.

A 22" Toad picked off with my 3-wt Meiser Trout Spey

There are innumerable resources (books and videos among them) to help an angler learn the art of Spey casting.  The people making them know much more than I do about Spey casting and if I made another one (ignoring the fact I'm not capable) it would not add to the discussion in a significant way. Rather than that, I'll identify resources that helped me and explain what lessons I took from them in my journey to become a better Spey caster.  

For experienced single-handed casters, learning to apply power with the bottom hand rather than the top hand is one of the greatest challenges.  This short video of my buddy illustrates the problem of pushing with the top hand -- when I took the video, my buddy thought his bottom hand was applying this power.

   

Needs More Bottom Hand Power

On stillwater, especially for beginners to two-handed casting, the Skagit Cast is a good starting place, which is what will be covered in this post.

The four parts of the Skagit Cast are the lift, anchor set, sweep, and fire, which are performed smoothly one after another.  If some of these terms are strange, one of my blogs explains the terminology of Spey casting.

• Lift:  Breaks the tension of the line on the water and raises sink tips and heavy flies, as needed, to prepare for the anchor set.
• Anchor Set:  The anchor must be set a rod length from the caster at an angle from 30 to 60 degrees depending upon the target line of the cast.  
• Sweep:  This motion loads the rod and makes a large D-loop to load the road for the cast.
• Fire:  This motion is a small pull with the bottom hand to load the road and launch the fly.  All Spey casts get to the same firing position.  

As we are talking about a trout Spey, we will let Joe Rotter provide a demonstration for us.  His web content (videos and blogs) provide useful information.  Joe doesn't talk about the lift but it is clear in his video.  His key piece of advice is slow down, which is a critical success factor for Spey casting.  Slowing down may be more important than applying power with the bottom hand for being a successful two-handed caster.

Dec Hogan explains the lift motion and tells us why it is important.  Moving water will make this different than the lift is on still water as the water current moving away provides an assist for the lift, which will not be the case in still water.  In a future blog, this will be discussed in more detail.

Simon Gawesworth demonstrates a Snap-T anchor set.  There is much to say about this and in this short blog, we won't be able to cover it.  In another section about consistency, we will come back to it. For now, notice the anchor is set about a one-rod length away from the caster and an angle of about 45 degrees to the intended target line.  For stillwater, I've modified this anchor set.  In moving water the cast changes the direction of the fly from Simon's left shoulder to in front of him.  In stillwater we often cast right back in the same direction.  This difference changes the anchor set motion, which will be covered in another blog.

Bob Gillespie provides some of the best advice you will ever see when he discusses the climbing curve on the sweep.  In a future blog, I will discuss consistency in more detail but for now, it is important to always start with the rod tip on the water and then gradually lift the tip (e.g. climbing curve) until the tip is in the firing position.
The sweep is executed in one plane and the fire in another plane as Ed Ward explains in the first minute of his video, which is a handy way to look at it.  The entirety of this video is a good explanation of the Skagit cast versus other forms of casting.

Simon Gawesworth (again) explains the firing position starting at about 830 in this video.  Critical in the firing position is to get the bottom hand away from your body so it has room to pull the butt of the rod for the cast.  If it is too close to the body then the caster is forced to push the rod away, and the result will be a high effort for a weak cast.

Useful References:
Jon Hazlett from Ashland Fly Shop (Youtube Videos)
Joe Rotter from Red's Fly Shop (Youtube Videos)
Tom Larimer (Youtube Videos)
Spey Casting by Simon Gawesworth does a great job of describing the dynamic activity of Spey Casting in book format.  Particularly valuable are his tips for troubleshooting problems with your casting.  

Two-Handed Spey Casting Techniques by Al Buhr another useful book reference for a Spey caster's library.  It is pricey but can be found used at a more reasonable price.

[P1] Why Use a Trout Spey on Stillwater

"Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."
- Henry David Thoreau

By nature, people are curious and problem solvers.  Fly fishing provides us with the opportunity to satisfy our curiosity and to solve problems, which is a reason I was drawn to it.  My curiosity led me to a degree in math and physics, which then led me into aerospace where designing things that had never been built before was a way of life.  Then I retired.  What to do with the curiosity and engineering skills I have developed?  Fly fishing was my choice.  I think to one degree or another this describes all fly fishers -- they are curious about their quarry and they enjoy the challenge of catching that quarry with a fly rod.  

Two Ruby Mountain Fly Fishers at Pyramid Lake's Pelican Rock

As an example, I was fishing in Pyramid Lake when a character next to me was catching nearly all the fish.  As I often quip, the best place to fish Pyramid Lake is on either side of me but this was ridiculous.  He was using a typical Pyramid Lake rig -- sinking line, weighted leech on the bottom, and a Pyramid Lake Beetle on a 9" stinger about 18" above the beech.  I was tossing a balanced leech about 8' under an indicator with my 6-wt switch rod.   

My first thought was how can I duplicate that fishing technique with a small Spey.  Well, it is not so easy.  To be honest, I don't have a solution as I write this, but when I work it out there will be a blog entry.  I do know that all the knots common to swinging flies with two-handed rods, for which the gear was designed, does not work well on lakes.  We need something different.  The integrated lines that could work are designed for a single-handed rod and thus don't have the tapers necessary for Spey casting.  So it goes.  What this all provides for me is an opportunity to scratch my creative/engineering urges by finding a suitable solution to this problem.  

For those who might not know, Pyramid Lake is home to trophy-sized Lahontan Cutthroat and in fact is the only place you can catch these magnificent fish that weigh over 20 pounds.  Pyramid Lake, located in the northwest corner of Nevada about 40 miles north of Reno, has a sand and gravel bottom with few snags.  Creative people have invented an entire ecosystem of techniques, flies, and even ladders with chairs on them for fishing this unique lake, illustrating the point.

Spey techniques, which can be used with either single-handed or two-handed rods, can provide the angler with more tools to tackle the various fishing situations we encounter.  Pyramid Lake is one.  Small reservoirs and ponds, with trophy-sized trout, are another. 

I may have buried my lead but that's OK.  Spey casting provides useful capabilities for stillwater situations.  Anglers who use them will be more successful.

• Spey casting keeps everything in front of the angler.  Commonly this is expressed as being able to cast with obstructions behind the angler.  This is true but they may not always be things on a bank.  In smaller ponds when fishing with other anglers, one must check behind them before casting in the traditional way to avoid hooking somebody, which interferes with the joy of fishing.  With a Spey cast, no worries, as all is in front of the angler.  No worries except for somebody else hooking you.  

Two Ruby Mountain Fly Fishers in Small Reservoir

• Change of direction.  Spey casts were designed to swing flies in a river.  With this technique, one casts between 45 and 90 degrees to the bank and then lets the fly drift in the current back to the bank.  Once the fly is at the bank (on the dangle in the jargon) the next cast is made back out into the river.  But changing direction can be useful for the fly fisher in Stillwater.  I was fishing in Wildhorse one spring.  I was using a single-handed rod but I can execute Spey casts with it.  I was fishing a leech under an indicator when a big guy porpoising along caught my eye.  It was off moving along to the right side of my little pontoon boat.  I made a single motion Spey cast to change my direction and put the leech out in front of that fish and began to strip it.  Fortune smiled on me as that bad boy came and got it.  Without the Spey cast, I probably would not have caught that fish.  
• Length.  As I mentioned in the Curses of the Long Cast, casting long can be a curse of Spey casting.  But it is nice to have the distance when you see a trout rising a ways from your boat.  If that distance isn't available, then the fish may move on before you have your boat maneuvered to a place to make the cast.  
• Practice.  The closest salmon/steelhead swinging water for me is a five-hour drive.  Using a trout Spey for fishing my local waters gives me a way to maintain and improve my two-handed casting skills, keeping me ready for that trip to a big river. 
• Fun.  Ed Ward, one of the Skagit masters, talks about fishing goals.  First, you want to catch fish; then you want to catch lots of fish; then you want to catch bit fish; then you want to catch lots of big fish.  After this journey, Ed discovered it wasn't catching the fish he was after.  He now says he wants to be out fishing, as long as it is with a two-handed rod.  That is the deal that makes the challenge of mastering a two-handed rod worthwhile.