Spey Fishing British Columbia

Another beautiful slow motion Spey casting and fishing video done by Simms. Sharing for all to enjoy.

In Search of the Grab - Steelhead fishing Skagit style

Here is a beautiful video by Simms that I thought I should share. Beautiful slow motion Skagit casting for Steelhead in late fall Oregon.

Skagit Casting Olympic Peninsula

Click on the photo to go to the Youtube video

Could not resist sharing this. Mesmerizing slow motion video on Skagit casting and fishing in the Olympic Peninsula. Beautifully done video. Beautiful place.

Skagit Spey Casting with Ed Ward

Here are two very good YouTube videos of Ed Ward, the Jedi master of Skagit casting, demonstrating and explaining the art. This is a must watch for those who are interested in Skagit casting as it is very enlightening. It covers the history and development of Skagit casting briefly and goes on to demonstrate the finer points of Skagit casting and how it differs from other form of Spey casting.

In this video Ed talks about water tension being the friend of a Skagit caster and stressed on getting lots of line on the water (full contact) and waiting for the line motion to stop before moving on the next stage of the cast. While this is true for floating Skagit head, my experience with intermediate sink Skagit head (Wulff Ambush Clear Head & SA Skagit Extreme Intermediate) however tells me that water tension can sometimes become too "friendly". Intermediate sink head can sit too low if left too long in the water column and in this case, full and prolong water contact becomes a hindrance. Once the water surface developed too much grip on the fly line, energy will be sapped from the cast when sweeping to form the D-Loop and the cast will not go well. Cast that performs well for intermediate Skagit head are those that the line only sit on the water surface briefly. For that reason, I often turn to the Speed Poke when using intermediate line.

Skagit Spey Casting

Here is a nice video showing Skagit style Spey casting. Skagit Spey is one of the three predominant style in Spey casting. The other two being traditional mid-long belly Spey and Scandinavian Spey. Skagit and Scandinavian (Scandi) Spey casting are also sometimes referred to as shooting Spey because of the  use of short shooting head (20ft - 35ft) and thin running line to achieve distance. Because of the shorter head, the D-loop of these two styles are by design smaller than traditional Spey and therefor require less back cast room to execute.

While traditional Spey and Scandi Spey predominantly make use of touch-n-go or kiss-n-go anchoring, Skagit Spey make use of sustain anchor almost exclusively. As the name implies, touch-n-go anchor is set as the leader/fly momentarily touches the water. As for sustain anchor, sink-tip/leader/fly is allowed to sit on or sink into the water column long enough to provide a good grip for the anchor.