Oooh! Something I know the answer to! The "traditional" spey rod is 13 feet and 4 inches, and was designed for the fish (namely salmon, but also trout and greyling among others) of the River Spey in Scotland. Since then, the rod has been used to cast more than just "spey" flies (a type of salmon-fly which started as a drab wet fly/ streamer hybrid with characteristic extra-long hackle barbs, stretching a good two inches from the hackle- stem towards and past the hook bend). The classic rod was made of local soft-woods as a single piece, but today use all of the materials available to the sport. Spey rods are traditionally two-handed rods, but some companies now provide one-handed rods in the same length and line-weight, with a fighting cup/ fighting grip below the reel. Due to the native soft-woods of Scotland, the average "traditional" line-weight of a spey rod was 8-9, but today these rods are made from as low as 5 weight (I have a 5-6wt 13'4" St. Croix special order) to 11 weight (I also have a 10-11 weight St. Croix Imperial 15' rod). They are used primarily in Alaska and Scotland these days. Spey casting may be seen as an artform of finesse, but is not that complicated if you can do a decent one-handed roll-cast. The trick is to form a "D-loop" with the fly as an anchor at the bottom of the "D", the rod the straight back of the "D" and the line flowing in the curve of the "D" from the anchored fly to the rod-tip. The cast is then done with a rooster- tail of line on the water surface, pointing to the cast direction, and then the shot, which is simply what the name implies. By mixing up the directions and speeds of stroke, one may easily (albeit with practice) cast the multitudes of casts (my favorite being the snake-roll cast, for the ease on the shoulders and endurance it allows for). Further, you may cast for as short as 30' (possibly less, but it gets difficult) to as much as 100' or more (my record is 116), all with a mere flick of the rod tip.
I love to spey cast and tie spey flies, and enjoy even more being able to share my knowledge with others, so if you are ever north of Philadelphia, PA, USA by about an hour or two, look me up! I'll get ya' set up. Just once you get into spey casting - at least for me - going back to a 1-hander (or learning it in the first place, for my case) is difficult at best and impossib;e at worst! Best of luck to ya' and Tight Wraps, Pete ___________________________________________________________________ Speed up your surfing with Juno SpeedBand. Now includes pop-up blocker! Only $14.95/month -visit http://www.juno.com/surf to sign up today!
