Hi Gus -
Thanks for buying the CND Expert 1409, I personally love to cast and fish that rod myself.
You can save money by buying a floating spey line and looping your own tips. I assume you are talking about the lines with tips when you say expensive, whereby the spey floating lines are not much more than a standard fly line. Depending on the line you buy, you cut the front of the head back <n> feet and add a loop. Then you cut a shooting head or buy some sinktip material from Rio or Airflo and loop that as an alternative sinktip. Much cheaper although it sure is easy just to buy the kit from Rio.
As far as which line, there are really two camps as Simon Gawesworth notes on his line ratings and Dana alludes to in his many articles - those who like a deeper load in the rod with less work (grainier line) and those who like to work more line and use the power in the stroke to load the rod (less grainy).
Many at the Sandy Clave in OR were very impressed with that rod when matched with the traditional 8/9 as mentioned by Kush. I've had a number of lines on it but for my casting style and preferences I would have to say that the Airflo Traditional 8/9 which is 725 grains over 80-85 feet of head - gives the long belly feel while matching up very nicely for that rod and is my favorite for dry line work on that rod. As Rajeff suggests, I cut the first few feet off for a more positive turn-over since I don't need a finesse tip on the line.
When fishing sinktips however, the Rio Windcutter 9/10/11 is rated at 650 grains by Rio and so that gives you some room for more grains once you put sintips on it while staying within the rod's ideal grain range. I will double check to make sure this is the line I was using recently with sinktips, in any case it fished well provided you stripped the running line to the back of the head before casting.
The Midspey, which has got to be the most versatile of all spey lines, also casts well on this rod (no surprise) but the ratings run a little under so the 8/9 Midspey for lighter touch and 9/10 for deep loading is the way to go. The 9/10 is rated by Rio at 725 grains, the same as the traditional, which works well with this rod.
Was there something you disliked about the Windcutter 9/10/11 on that rod that is the reason for this question?
