Is there any advantage in a spey rod?

In article , Peter Charles
wrote:

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 17:10:08 +0000, Lazarus Cooke
wrote:



Recently, though, (viz., in the past ten years or so), I've seen rods
marketed in two fifteen foot versions, one normal, one so-called "spey"
rods. The distinction seems daft to me.

Lazarus


Ahhh, well look at my first post about the three schools and the
distinction is no longer daft. It's pretty hard to use shooting heads
proficiently on a rod that was designed to lift and cast a long line.
It can be done but it isn't half as much fun compared to using the
right rod for the job.

Sure. A shooting head is a shooting head. Which you can use with an
overhead cast or a spey cast. And a spey cast is a spey cast. Which
you can use with a shooting head (although I'd never do so) or a DT or
whatever. What's one to do with the other?

L

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On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 09:52:20 +0000, Lazarus Cooke
wrote:

In article , Peter Charles
wrote:

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 17:10:08 +0000, Lazarus Cooke
wrote:



Recently, though, (viz., in the past ten years or so), I've seen rods
marketed in two fifteen foot versions, one normal, one so-called "spey"
rods. The distinction seems daft to me.

Lazarus


Ahhh, well look at my first post about the three schools and the
distinction is no longer daft. It's pretty hard to use shooting heads
proficiently on a rod that was designed to lift and cast a long line.
It can be done but it isn't half as much fun compared to using the
right rod for the job.

Sure. A shooting head is a shooting head. Which you can use with an
overhead cast or a spey cast. And a spey cast is a spey cast. Which
you can use with a shooting head (although I'd never do so) or a DT or
whatever. What's one to do with the other?

L

Would you call a Perry Poke a Spey cast or a Skagit cast? If you call
all casts that depend on a D-loop, a "Spey" cast then it's pretty
difficult to draw a distinction. You say you've never casted a
shooting head, perhaps that's why you're having problems with the
notion of different styles of rods and lines.

Basically, long-line casting technique with DTs or long belly WF lines
depends on a big D-Loop. A moderate, through action rod casts them
very well. Now strap on a shooting head or a short belly WF line and
try it. It'll cast, but not with the same proficiency. Try it again
with what Sage calls their Euro rods (fast, tip-to-middle action) and
watch them fly.

Peter

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Peter Charles wrote:

Basically, long-line casting technique with DTs or long belly WF lines
depends on a big D-Loop. A moderate, through action rod casts them
very well. Now strap on a shooting head or a short belly WF line and
try it. It'll cast, but not with the same proficiency. Try it again
with what Sage calls their Euro rods (fast, tip-to-middle action) and
watch them fly.

Peter, would you say Sage's 9141-4 "European" is a longer casting rod
than the 9140-4 "Traditional"? Would the latter be a better (i.e., more
forgiving) rod for a novice?

JR

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 17:10:08 +0000, Lazarus Cooke
wrote:

In article , Lazarus
Cooke wrote:

I've always spey cast, some of the time. This whole business of special
rods for spey casting is quite recent. Are they really any better for
spey casting, or is just a gimmick?

Lazarus

Sorry I didn't explain well enough. I didn't say I didn't know what a
spey cast is, or where it comes from. I know the Spey well ** indeed,
if you want to learn about the early Spey flies you could do worse
than to look at a book by a distant relative, "Autumns on the Spey".

I live in Britain, where people have always used the long rod for
salmon. So I have always used a fifteen rod for salmon fishing. (or
most of the time. On some west country rivers I'll use a nine foot
trout rod, which works very well, but for the bigger, rocky rivers in
Scotland or Ireland I'll generally use a fifteen or twelve foot rod, as
much to control the line in the water as for length of casting.)

So, depending on the direction of the wind, the state of the bank and
so on, I'll sometimes cast overhand, sometimes spey. I was taught to
spey cast at the same time as I learnt to cast overhand.

Recently, though, (viz., in the past ten years or so), I've seen rods
marketed in two fifteen foot versions, one normal, one so-called "spey"
rods. The distinction seems daft to me.

Lazarus


Penny dropped. You're wondering why North Americans refer to "spey"
rods when you would call it a "salmon" rod. Correct? It's just the
name that's caught on over here, the rods are the same. There's
always been a terminology problem over here as "two-hander" is too big
a mouthful and "salmon" is pretty useless when we use them for chasing
steelhead.

There also basically two classes of two-handed rods which Sage has a
addressed with it's "Euro" and "Traditional" models but these names
haven't widely caught on. Despite these attempts, we tend to call any
long fly rod with a two-handed grip a "spey" rod.

As I mentioned earlier, the two classes of rods are based on shooting
head vs. long line. In the UK, shooting head rods aren't that common
yet so I'm not surprised that you find the distinction useless. Spend
some time doing the Skagit or underhand casts with different rods and
you might have a different appreciation. I spent a couple of days
recently casting rods using short belly and medium belly lines as part
of a group contributing to a magazine article on "spey" rods. We
performed both Skagit and Spey casts with each rod, using both lines.
There was an amazing difference in some rods when we switched from
short to medium bellied lines. There is only 10' difference in the
head so you'd think the difference would be negligible, but no, some
rods were useless with the short heads and others were useless with
the long ones. There were six of us casting and we were unanimous in
our opinions about this. There's no doubt in my mind that some rods
work well with DTs and traditional spey casting while others work much
better with the short heads.

We were also affected by the lack of a standardized rating system for
lines and rods. None of us liked the new fast Hardy's on the short
lines but loved them on the long. In retrospect, they weren't getting
loaded on the short lines and we should have gone up a line weight.

I think we'll see the so-called spey-action rods disappear from the
market as the faster rods take over. I own a Lamiglas that was made
to Mike Maxwell's "true spey rod" standards and it handles a DT very
nicely. It will cast shooting heads but it isn't pleasant or
efficient. The newer, faster rods seemed to do both jobs well so
there doesn't seem to be a reason for maintaining a distinction.
Given that Hardy has introduced two fast action cannons, the days of
the slow rod have to be numbered. One of the Loomis reps in the group
normally fishes with a GLX but on casting the Hardy Gem, he fell in
love and said that were it not for his Loomis affiliation, he would
toss his GLX for the Gem.

Give it a few years Lazarus and, except for some UK diehards, we'll be
back to only one type of rod.



Peter

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In article , Peter Charles
wrote:

Would you call a Perry Poke a Spey cast or a Skagit cast?

I don't know what either a Perry Poke or a Skagit cast are
If you call
all casts that depend on a D-loop, a "Spey" cast then it's pretty
difficult to draw a distinction.

I'd call casts that depend on a D-loop a roll cast (some people here
also call it a switch cast). For me fundamental to a Spey cast is a
change of direction.


You say you've never casted a
shooting head, perhaps that's why you're having problems with the
notion of different styles of rods and lines.

No. Just with the distinction between a rod specially made for Spey
casting. Partly, I suppose, because I may well end up doing both Spey
and overhead casts on the same river on the same day. I don't really
want to carry two rods around for which way the wind happens to be, and
how awkward the bank is behind me.

Lazarus

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On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 13:48:44 +0100, JR wrote:

Peter Charles wrote:

Basically, long-line casting technique with DTs or long belly WF lines
depends on a big D-Loop. A moderate, through action rod casts them
very well. Now strap on a shooting head or a short belly WF line and
try it. It'll cast, but not with the same proficiency. Try it again
with what Sage calls their Euro rods (fast, tip-to-middle action) and
watch them fly.

Peter, would you say Sage's 9141-4 "European" is a longer casting rod
than the 9140-4 "Traditional"? Would the latter be a better (i.e., more
forgiving) rod for a novice?

JR


I've only cast the 9141 -- knowing the 9140 "brownie" by reputation
only. The 9141 will enable the novice to cast further than a 9140 but
both rods, in the hands of a proficient caster, would cast about the
same distance.

"Good for the novice" is a tough call as it depends on a number of
factors. Slow rods, such as the Sage brownie, require a finesse touch
to cast well. Very little power needs to be applied by the caster to
cast these rods well so the novice tends to overpower them. The
faster rods tend to tolerate this a bit better. IMHO, a good "novice"
rod would be one that provides a lot of feedback to the caster -- the
caster should be able to feel the load quite easily.

That said, I wouldn't buy either rod. Out of the six testers, five
thought the Scott SAS 1409 to be a fantastic rod (the one exception
tended to prefer slower rods) and all consider it better than the
9141. It's a fast rod, like the 9141, but unlike the 9141, it casts
very lightly. It's a very powerful rod yet it's tractable over a
fairly broad range of casting conditions and it wasn't too fussy about
what line we used as it casted both regular and long Delta Airflo
9/10s quite well. The Scott SAS 1409 would be my top recommendation
to anyone starting off with a 14' 9 wt.



Peter

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On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 14:30:50 GMT, (Greg Pavlov)
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 08:28:04 -0500, Peter Charles
wrote:

Given that Hardy has introduced two fast action cannons, the days of
the slow rod have to be numbered. One of the Loomis reps in the group
normally fishes with a GLX but on casting the Hardy Gem, he fell in
love and said that were it not for his Loomis affiliation, he would
toss his GLX for the Gem.

The Hardy Gem was the first "spey" rod I cast that made
spey casting seem almost easy to me.


I've casted about 30 odd spey rods over the past few years, including
all of the top names, and IMHO the Hardy Gem with the right line on
it, is the best of the bunch.

Peter

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On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 22:26:15 +0000, Lazarus Cooke
wrote:

In article , Peter Charles
wrote:

Would you call a Perry Poke a Spey cast or a Skagit cast?

I don't know what either a Perry Poke or a Skagit cast are
If you call
all casts that depend on a D-loop, a "Spey" cast then it's pretty
difficult to draw a distinction.

I'd call casts that depend on a D-loop a roll cast (some people here
also call it a switch cast). For me fundamental to a Spey cast is a
change of direction.

OK, a D-Loop and a change of direction.



You say you've never casted a
shooting head, perhaps that's why you're having problems with the
notion of different styles of rods and lines.

No. Just with the distinction between a rod specially made for Spey
casting. Partly, I suppose, because I may well end up doing both Spey
and overhead casts on the same river on the same day. I don't really
want to carry two rods around for which way the wind happens to be, and
how awkward the bank is behind me.

Lazarus

Most of the spey rods I've casted can also overhead cast very well
however they can need different lines to do both jobs well.

I don't think that identifying a rod as a "spey" rod precludes it's
use as an overhead rod. However, a good spey casting rod usually will
have characteristics not found on "overhead only" rods. I have an
8'6" single hander that is a wonderful spey caster but not so some of
the other rods I own. To execute a big change of direction,
especially on the single, a stout upper section is needed. A lot of
the rods on the market have wimpy tips that would collapse on such a
cast. I think it's really a question of optimization of the design.

Peter

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On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 22:26:15 +0000, Lazarus Cooke
wrote:

In article , Peter Charles
wrote:

Would you call a Perry Poke a Spey cast or a Skagit cast?

I don't know what either a Perry Poke or a Skagit cast are
If you call
all casts that depend on a D-loop, a "Spey" cast then it's pretty
difficult to draw a distinction.

I'd call casts that depend on a D-loop a roll cast (some people here
also call it a switch cast). For me fundamental to a Spey cast is a
change of direction.


You say you've never casted a
shooting head, perhaps that's why you're having problems with the
notion of different styles of rods and lines.

No. Just with the distinction between a rod specially made for Spey
casting. Partly, I suppose, because I may well end up doing both Spey
and overhead casts on the same river on the same day. I don't really
want to carry two rods around for which way the wind happens to be, and
how awkward the bank is behind me.

Lazarus


I should reiterate my earlier point that the term "spey rod" is being
used over here to describe any two handed rod regardless of its
intended usage.

Peter

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Peter Charles wrote in
:

Most of the spey rods I've casted can also overhead cast very well
however they can need different lines to do both jobs well.

I don't think that identifying a rod as a "spey" rod precludes it's
use as an overhead rod.

Hmmm ... I had one of your countrymen (a transplanted guiding type
from the BC area I believe) recommend a 15' spey rod
for overhead casting in the surf. Apart from the all-to-apparent
"guide-speak" I was a bit dubious about the weight of the rod having
tried an 11 foot single hander some time back and feeling I was
buggering my arm trying to heft it. More a technique problem
amplified by the length and weight of the rod than anything and I
suspect fixable with time in practice.

Could one be used overhead for any length of time without undue
tiredness?

Steve