Thanks Gary & Marty for the input regarding the sink tips. As far as saving $$$ & time I will probably go will a set up like you guys recommended. BUT one of the reasons I asked the questions was because of what happened on Thursday/27th when my fishing partner & I went to the Sky for about 4 hours of late afternoon fishing.
He was using a 2 handed Spey with 15 foot sink tip, grains unknown by me, I was using my famous 20 foot sink tip that was given to me (that no one remembers what grains it is) and we had no hits. Also while dead drifting on in the swing most of the time I was never sure where exactly my fly was both in the vertical & horizontal. Once in a while I could feel a boulder but was never sure how big it was so was unsure most of the time how far off the bottom my fly was. Also once in a while I got hung up and when I tightened my line it appeared that the was a big bow in it to the fly (but this may have accrued after the hang-up not sure). Now some of this is a very large lack of experience, on my part, fishing for winter steelhead. Then about 30 to 45 minutes after we started fishing another 2 hand spey fly rodder came in and started fishing behind us. Low and behold he caught a nice bright 5-6 lb steelhead. When talking with him I happened to ask about his sink tip. It was a 9 foot 150 grain tip. Ever since that discussion (last night & today) questions have floated threw my mind about this. One was did the length have anything to do with his catching the fish besides just the tip weight? and If length matters which is more important weight or length of sink tip? I am not sure but I presume that most of the packages sold by Rio, AirFlow & Cortland have the same length tips just different sink rates. So in most cases will you have better fly control by using different weights plus possibly different lengths of sink tip or just the different weights (sink rates)? Thank you, Ray :-)
