[Grateful Spey]

Unless swinging in shallow water or with skaters, intermediate or sinking skagits are the way to go IMO. Rather than things sinking starting at the end of the skagit, it's sinking from the tip of your rod and my beliefs are you can feel and swing more naturally that with the floater skagits. There are plenty of variables an angler can do to slow down/speed up/ sink faster or sink slower by rod placements during the swing. A few different depths can be achieved through one set up just by the way your swinging, a floating head kind of leaves you with just the length of the sinktip & leader to work with rather than using your entire line to help you cover different water depths. Also you can swing at the water speed underneath the surface with the entire line and not have the surface current speed you up. You can set up your rig so it's not designed to sink to the bottom of a lake, 500gr intermediate skagit & 12' T11 is a set up I use exclusively for swinging 98% of the time no matter what obstructions are on the riverbed.