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Göran Andersson on the Deschutes / Leland on the fly – screenshot.

While not too many will even get through two minutes of this video, self commenting,”I don’t spey cast. I don’t even own or want to own a 15-foot fly rod.”

By Skip Clement

All I can say is, think out of the box – give it a few more minutes – extrapolate. I learned how to use two hands casting on my 12-, 9-, and 8-weights in South Florida fly fishing the surf, canals, and Everglades [largemouth bass, exotics, snook, tarpon, and other game fish]. When a shoulder injury and arthritis in my dominant hand arrested my fly fishing full stop, I was out-of-business even spin fishing was out.

Discovering the big easy

To use a spey-like cast with a conventional 9-foot fly rod – any rod length, your “fly line” has to initiate the cast. It has to start in the water – being in-touch so it can create tension – bend the rod.

The casts are referred to in Gringo parlance as “water hauls.” As odd as this may sound, the water hauls used in spey casting are as close to intuitive as the definition of the word allows. Spey cast, while seeming there is the need for balletic schooling to learn, is not at all problematic.

If you can double haul, which could be equated to learning quantum physics, spey casts would be compared merely as easy as learning addition and subtraction.

Like when driving a car and two handed casting you need to use your hands – not your arms

What I found out was that fly casting the spey way had more gears than appeared on the horizon, and those gears the difference in success or working unnecessarily hard for less profit.

Be patient with yourself, watch this video and learn how to be good at two hand fly casting — yes, with your 9-footer

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