How silly is this?   photo by Louis Cahill Photography

I learned to spey cast in the 90s, back in the days when spey rods were a relatively new tool in the steelheaders arsenal in the PNW.   Lines were long belly mid-spey lines back then and my initial instruction consisted of about 10 minutes of my friend showing me a single and double spey and off I went.   I watched videos on spey casting and the one I remember the most had this basic formula of Lift-Loop-Pause-Fire.   This is how I learned to cast and after some time was able to put out a lot of line and actually caught some steelhead.

Move ahead a decade or two and the old-school mid-spey lines are a thing of the past replaced by Skandi and Skagit heads which have a much shorter belly and require a much different casting stroke.   I remember one trip on the Deschutes where I was fishing my 11’6″ 6-weight switch rod and the guide had strung on a nice Skandi line.  I had a heck of a time casting more than 15′ of shooting line while the guide could literally cast the whole line without effort, obviously I was doing something wrong.  Last year on the Deschutes Jeff Hickman spent some time with me using a 13’6″ spey rod and sink tips and by the end of that trip I was casting much better but this year when I went back to the switch rod and the Skandi head I was back to having issues getting it out there effectively and efficiently.

After one casting lesson he concluded that my main problem was my little pause after making the loop and then having to push with my upper hand to make up for the loss of tension.   Jeff teaches that you need to lift the line via single-spey, double-spey, snap-T or whatever method and then sweep the rod 270 degrees in a three count to form the D-loop then flow directly into an over-the-top motion on the four count that pulls with the lower hand and stops with the upper hand.  He kept telling me to make whimpy casts and to not move my arms so much.    After some coaching I was settling in a bit better but once I got tired I fell apart and started my old habits.

Making a D-Loop while Hickman watches       photo by Louis Cahill Photography

Finally at the end of the second day Jeff watched me making my usual mistake again and decided to take action.  He had me undo my wading belt and wrap it around my arms pinning my upper arms to my chest.  I then had to cast with this limited motion so I couldn’t actually put force on the forecast and had to just be slow and smooth with my casting stroke.   Awkward but it did prove that you can make a spey cast and a long one at that w/o needing upper arms at all.   After about a half hour of that Jeff took out his fly box that had all his flies for the trip and had me put it under my right arm and hold it there against my body not letting it drop in the river.   I cast about 10 minutes this way and finally he let me give back the box and remove the belt.  I looked silly as hell out there casting but it worked and the rest of the trip I was knocking out much better casts, especially with a sink tip but also with the floater.

Now hopefully after four days I have erased my bad habits and will be able to cast properly this winter and next season w/o having to go through the whole lesson again.