Got my spey setup today!

[Tracy Lauricella]

Thanks to "swinger10" for the excellent deal he posted in the classifieds, as of today, I'm now the happy owner of a Loop MULTI 14' 9wt spey rod and a Megaloop reel.

Pics:

• Rod
• Reel
• Simple rod tube I made to protect it

I set up the reel with a 600 grain Airflo compact skagit head (26'), and Rio powerflex core shooting line. I've got a Rio 15' floating tip on it now, but also have a Rio 15' type 6 sink tip as well.

I also picked up a 5' Skagit Cheater, but I suspect I won't need it.

[stewart dee]

Looks like a nice setup, just need a picture of a fish with it now.

[Tracy Lauricella]

Looks like a nice setup, just need a picture of a fish with it now.

I'll work on it!

[orangeradish]

Long time, no see. Congrats on the new setup.
Jason

[Tracy Lauricella]

Long time, no see. Congrats on the new setup.
Jason

Yeah, I haven't been around much. I spent all of July and most of August working at scout camp, which meant the end of June was also spent getting ready for it. I managed to get my wife to come out to camp and do some fishing in the lake there with me on the weekends, and got her hooked on fishing, if you'll pardon the pun. She's still not all that interested in fly fishing, but she's definitely enjoying going out and catching fish.

We went out on the Snoqualmie yesterday and discovered the hard way that her back problems make wading in a moving river a very painful experience for her, even when it's only knee deep. She suggested the possibility of getting a drift boat so we could fish the rivers and do less wading. I like this idea.

Other than that, our free time on the weekends has been spent at the gun range, her using her new pistol and me alternating between my AR and my new Mosin-Nagant. Fun times!

Getting a bit more off topic here, but I thought I'd share- here's my son with us at the range, firing my AR: AR shooting video and firing my .45: .45 video

Back on the subject of fishing, my carpool partner now has meetings 2 days a week so I'm left to commute on my own on Mondays and Thursdays. Since I work in Redmond & live in Tacoma, I get up extra-super early and am able to be on the Snoqualmie by 6:30 am on those days, and can fish until 9 before heading into work. I've been doing that for a few weeks now. (nothing caught yet but smolt and ~6" cutthroat). It'll be a good time to practice with the new spey setup (despite it being a bit overkill for summer steelhead there.)

--Tracy

[Panhandle]

good rod. Make sure and cut the type 6 back to around 10 feet.

[Tracy Lauricella]

good rod. Make sure and cut the type 6 back to around 10 feet.

Why is that? (I'm still trying to understand all the various "rules" around spey setups.)

Should the sinktip be shorter than when I'm using a floating tip?

I was looking to get close to 3x rod length (14' rod x 3 = 42 feet) as a ballpark to start with. The compact Skagit head is 26', plus a 15' tip would get me to 41'.

With the sinktip at 10', that'd make the setup 31'. I could put 4' of cheater on to put me at 35' (2x rod length) but at this point, I'm not sure what's going to be best.

Can you elaborate on why I should cut back the sinktip?

Thanks,

--Tracy

[LyNcH]

I would suggest casting the rod with the tip the way it is before you cut. Once you do that, there is no turning back. I use 15' tips on my Sage TCX 9wt 14' with a 700 grain skagit flight and have no need to cut them back. I haven't tried my 10' MOW tips on it yet, I figure I'll just need to let the anchor sit in the water for another second or so before starting my sweep.

[Panhandle]

The extra 15 feet does nothing but carry more of a burden of "stick." Its Skagit casting and grain weights really only correlate to the rod and partnering grain of the main line the rod is matched up for. You have much more latitude and forgiveness with Skagit casting when it comes to matching everything to the dynamics of the rod design. Anything added to the head is just more or less weight that you are casting/adding from the head. You mainly only need to worry about leader length when it comes to casting middle to long belly floaters. With tips, I use straight 15 lb maxima off of the tip, consisting of between 4-6 ft in length, and a little longer when using a clear intermediate tip. Basically, I see no resource in carrying around the extra 5 ft of sink tip, being that it does not sink faster or present better than 10 feet of type whatever.

[Panhandle]

Lynch, why would you want to let your anchor sit longer as you add more weight?

[stewart dee]

Your Golden just go practice and everything will happen. I recommend NO cheater and 8 to 10lb leader since the learning curve will afford you the chance to break off easy since you will snag up. Wear that eye wear and catch us a fish - whhhooottt whhoooot.

[LyNcH]

Lynch, why would you want to let your anchor sit longer as you add more weight?

It's not that I'm adding more weight, it's just that the set-up is shorter so the extra second pause would make sure the anchor is well planted during sweep and loop. Like I said, I haven't tried the MOW on it yet. I've only had a chance with the 15' tips and found it to be very rewarding. Next time out I plan on trying the MOW and mind find it even more enjoyable. All I was suggesting was don't chop before you try, not don't chop at all.

[Tracy Lauricella]

I took my new spey setup out this morning and had my first experiences with it. I thought I'd share a few observations.

First off, I've only done a small amount of spey casting. Specifically, one session with Aaron at one of his Saturday morning "Day on the River" classes. While it was a great intro, to say my experience with spey casting is limited is a bit of an understatement.

I got out to the river about 6:30 am and figured I'd start with the 15' floating tip and no fly. (I did have a 9' 0x knotless tapered leader on.)

I was on what I guess you call "river left". That is, the water was flowing from my right to my left while facing the river.

I began with single spey casts. A(t least I think that's the right term.) Line downstream on the dangle, lift the rod tip, sweep around, anchor and then stroke forward to form the cast.

I'd like to think I did OK for a beginner. I experimented for a while trying to figure out how high I should lift the line off the water before the sweep, how long to sweep it, how much of an anchor, etc. My results were fairly mediochre- I kept lifting the line too far off the water, or perhaps sweeping too fast, so that when I went to form the anchor, the line was too far upstream of me, and not anchoring properly.

I did get several good casts that way though, and after about half an hour of reliable casts I decided to put a fly on. I riffle hitched a dark green steelhead muddler on and continued casting, now letting it swing through the run after my casts. I was a bit discouraged at first, since I was only able to shoot about 10-15' of line, until I reminded myself that with 41' of head + tip + 9' of leader, these were still 60-65' casts. (Amazing how fast your perception changes from single-handed overhead casting, and 65' becomes a "short" cast.)

I decided to try something a little different and began doing double-spey casts. (again, I'm not sure if that's the right term). With the line on the dangle, and the tip pointing downstream, I'd lift the rod tip vertically through about a 160 degree arc until it was pointed upstream. Then immediately, I'd sweep it out parallel to the water (now holding the rod horizontally) until it was pointing back downstream again. This put the line in front of me, with the fly upstream. Then lift the rod tip again, sweep, anchor and stroke.

I found this to be much easier, despite the added steps. Having the line in front of me as I started the sweep & anchor portions of the cast made it much easier to get an anchor before the stroke. Plus, watching the line rip up from the surface in front of me felt pretty cool too.

I cast several more times that way, and decided to see how a heavier fly would feel. I switched out the muddler for a marabou fly with dumbell eyes. This was a fly I liked using on my single hand rig, but it was always a gamble to cast well. With the two handed setup it cast just fine.

A few times though, I messed up on the sweep and heard the telltale whipcrack of the end of the line in the air, telling me I'd had my timing off. After a couple of those I looked at the end of my line to find the end of the floating tip had snapped off, just where I'd had the leader attached. No idea where it and the fly had flown off to.

I cast this way for a bit longer, with no leader and no fly, just trying to concentrate on timing (and avoiding cracking the whip).

I then decided to try and see how the sink tip would feel, so I swapped out the floating tip. This was a 15' type 6 tip, so the length was the same as the floater.

If anything, this felt better than the floater- it certainly cast well and was quite predictable in its behavior. I practiced with this setup for another 40 minutes or so before deciding to try and put on a really heavy fly. I had a fly I'd tied up last year as an experiment, but had quickly discovered that there was no way I was going to be able to cast it reliably on my 6wt singlehander. It was a rabbit zonker leech fly, with a guinea collar in front, and an egg pattern in front of that (basically an egg-sucking bunny leech), I'd tied it on a hook with no point, and put on a trailing stinger, with a large translucent pink bead on the stinger line. (looking like an egg pattern itself). A neat fly, but the combination of the large fly, rabbit fur, and trailing bead made for a pretty hefty load.

I wanted to try it on the spey setup as kind of an acid test of what it was capable of. After all, Skagit setups are supposed to be built for this kind of thing, right?

Well, I'm pleased to say that it handled it just fine. I was quickly launching that rabbit rocket all the way across to the other side of the river and swinging it back to me through the current. I did find that I had to be more aggressive on my initial lift in order to flick it upstream before starting my horizontal sweep, but once I got the hang of that it seemed to work just fine.


All in all, I really love the new setup. It'll take me some time to really learn what I'm doing, and certainly taking more lessons needs to be in my future, but I'm able to get the fly where I want it, and had a heck of a lot of fun doing it. I need to work on my timing, my technique, and learn a few more casts (as well as learning when to use which ones), but the gear doesn't seem to be a limiting factor at all.

I should also add that though I didn't need to use the new reel much, it balances the rod well, and is quite possibly the smoothest reel that I've ever operated.

[Nooksack Mac]

Tracy, although I've never cast a Loop rod, much less your particular model, 600 grains of Skagit head is about right for an 8-weight, so may feel a little light for your 9-weight - especially as beginner spey casters often do better with a heavy-for-the-rod line, until they develop a more sensitive feel for the line/rod interraction. At a minimum, that 5' cheater will probably be helpful to you. I'd guess that your rod will feel more comfortable with 650-700 grains.

It's important that you get hands-on coaching from one or more experienced spey casters, and that you try out a number of possibly suitable lines on your rods. Don't depend on memory; take notes of what model and weight lines you're using. It's tough to match rod and lines, especially for beginners, but it's a necessary process.

Sink tip length, within the 9-15 foot range that most of us use, isn't important. The weight of the sink tip is. And just to be clear, the coated sinking "leaders" sold by Rio, Airflo, S.A. and others are sink tips for practical purposes. With sink tips, mono leaders, tapered or single-strand, a few feet long, work fine. With floating lines, a tapered leader roughly the length of your rod works better. That's all you need to know about leaders for now.

[Tracy Lauricella]

Tracy, although I've never cast a Loop rod, much less your particular model, 600 grains of Skagit head is about right for an 8-weight, so may feel a little light for your 9-weight - especially as beginner spey casters often do better with a heavy-for-the-rod line, until they develop a more sensitive feel for the line/rod interraction. At a minimum, that 5' cheater will probably be helpful to you. I'd guess that your rod will feel more comfortable with 650-700 grains.

It's important that you get hands-on coaching from one or more experienced spey casters, and that you try out a number of possibly suitable lines on your rods. Don't depend on memory; take notes of what model and weight lines you're using. It's tough to match rod and lines, especially for beginners, but it's a necessary process.

Sink tip length, within the 9-15 foot range that most of us use, isn't important. The weight of the sink tip is. And just to be clear, the coated sinking "leaders" sold by Rio, Airflo, S.A. and others are sink tips for practical purposes. With sink tips, mono leaders, tapered or single-strand, a few feet long, work fine. With floating lines, a tapered leader roughly the length of your rod works better. That's all you need to know about leaders for now.

You're not the first person to suggest a heavier head, so I'll have to give that a try. Thanks for the info about mono vs. tapered leaders on floating vs. sinking tips, I didn't know that.

Hands-on coaching from someone experienced is definitely on the "to do" list., as I recognize how valuable it is. Unfortunately, the times when I'm available are generally before work on weekdays, so I'll be doing a good deal of learning (or at least hopefully learning) on my own, at least for the next couple of weeks. I plan to go attend another one of Aaron's sessions soon though.