The Way of the Spey

When I first saw spey anglers on the Maitland River, I was amazed at how fluid and smooth they were casting. Knowing nothing about it, I thought as beautiful as it was that the line looped across the river, it seemd like a lot of work to get the fly out there. I was a single hander at the time and fairly new to it still. I was not quite sold on the effectiveness of it for salmon and steelhead. I was getting more into the centerpin scene.

Fast forward to today, centerpinning will still and as I see it, always be the primary method for migratories but I have reached a point in all these years of chasing chrome that numbers are no longer the true reason I target steelhead. I understand from all the research and conversing with those that spey only, that my fish to hook ratio may decrease if I took up the way of the spey. I am good with that knowing that at the times when I feel the need for some self-affirmation of banking some decent numbers of fish, there is always the centerpin to fall back on, not that it would be a guarantee as there is no such a thing in fishing.

There is much to learn and I have all summer to practice. Hopefully this fall, I will be ready to take on a few of those freight train powered strikes as the fly swings across the tailout.