Half-past January and a couple of feet of ice on the water. :frown2: Will be picking up my first two-hander in a couple of days so I have been viewing spey casting videos to try to get an idea on how to start come open water.
Of all the videos I have viewed, the ones posted by Andrew Moy (TightLinesinNJ channel) are the first I have seen that discuss the importance of stance and rotating at the hips/waist to develop energy for casting.
From my martial arts training, this makes sense to me (a proper punch comes from the floor, through the hip to the arm and fist) but, being a total newbie, I am not sure how much it really applies to spey casting.
Here is a link to one of Andrew's videos, I would appreciate if a couple of the experienced casters would view it and comment on its suitability.
Thanks,
Hank[/QUOTE
Hey Hank, I have watched Andrew Moy and picked up many a good casting and fishing pearls of wisdom from his videos.
There are many ways to skin a cat and subtle difference in casting styles that often depend on the length of line and size of fly or fly and sink tip to be cast.
Learning to spey cast is really not totally difficult but it's important to decipher exactly what kind of Speycasting you are going to be doing.
For example, with a longer Spey rod and line, like an actual Spey line that is at least 4 times the length of the rod or longer I watch
and
, or many of the top 10 finalists at Speyorama. Their technique is the best and they reach these amazing distances with excellent technique. They are casting 15 foot rods and 70' lines give or take. They sweep with their body and lean into their casts.
They pretty much keep their hands in front of themselves for the most part, which requires
rotation of the body and quiet hands.
Also, their bodies do not budge or give an inch when they lean into their casts. It's as if an incoming truck would bounce off of them when they release their forward casts.
In underhand casting and Scandi casting, the body twists, especially in the single spey and your body rocks as necessary, while the bottom hand produces a lot of the power in the sweep and forward cast, the hands are kept in front of the body, so they shouldn't swing around at all, so, therefore, the body has to rotate.
In contrast, guys like Ed Ward, and Mike McCunne, who cast short heavy Skagit heads do not use a ton of body movements but use mostly their hands, wrists, and forearms to make the cast. While body swaying is mostly nonexistent, rocking body weight from heel to the balls of the feet might be used a little bit to maintain the center of gravity.
https://vimeo.com/129327269
Also, Tom Larimer casts Skagit lines but uses a style that is a little more in line with traditional Spey casting, with emphasis on the bottom hand.
The reason I bring all of this up is so you can tailor your casting style with your new rod and line to match an instructor who casts a similar set up.
If your new switch rod is lined with a short, heavy Skagit head and you want to cast heavy flies and sink tips you might be well served to emulate Ed Ward, or the OPST guys or Tom Larimer.
If you pick up a scandi line that is much lighter then a heavy Skagit line, then you could use scandi or underhand techniques or even Skagit techniques.
Ok, back to the reason I'm saying all of this: Know the line length and rod length of the caster or instructor you are watching.
It's pretty hard to use Goran Anderson underhand casting techniques to cast longbelly spey lines.
It's hard to cast longbellys using the same casting stroke Mike McCunne uses to cast 11' Skagit heads t11 tips and a weighted streamer.
Twisting and rocking your body Like the long belly competition Spey isn't necessary with short shooting heads.
I'm not promoting any particular style or saying you need to follow a style or one is better than the other. But there are different casters using or even promoting different styles on the internet.
So your best bet is to find an instructor who is using the type of lines, tips and flies you want to cast and stick with him or her and that style to avoid confusion while your learning to cast.