While it might be the third cast in the Spey family that we filmed, it is the fifth cast in this series! It’s pretty straight-forward to learn this cast. Occasionally when teaching the Snap, students have problems with the line clipping the rod tip as the loop comes through – to avoid this you can snap the rod tip underneath and slightly to the inside of the fly leg.
Where the Snap T is more useful is for something like casting a dry fly, whereas with a streamer or heavy nymph rig then the Circle C would be the cast to use.
Now there is a far more advanced version of this cast, which is to fully aerialise the Snap. This removes the need to lift the line from the water the second time, and all of that movement can be done while the line is in the air.
In actual fact every single Spey Cast can be fully aerielised. It’s even possible to aerialise the “anchor”. The purpose of the anchor is to stabilise the D/V-loop, which most certainly assists in longer casts and generally makes the timing easier.
There is video here with quite a lot of “funk”…
If you play through this video you can see a lot of the Spey elements have been aerielised, indeed the “Snap Pick-up” is used pretty extensively, and if you look closely you will notice there are times when a second Snap is used while the loop is unrolling. It’s possible to take all of those loops and gather them nicely with a Snake Roll.
Of course it’s not fishing 🙂 🙂 🙂 (Maybe for bats :p ) It’s casting. But the elements that you learn through play will start to appear in your fishing and become natural additions to your casting. Where I fish in the jungle for example, slipped-lift aerielised Spey casting puts a lot of Snakehead in the boat. These fish wouldn’t be caught otherwise.
I learned to do this using a luminous flyline on moonless nights. I still do this actually and it’s the most fun casting that I have. You can often find me floating around the Malaysian Rainforest on a bamboo raft, “free-style” flycasting the Sexyloops Lumi-Line. I have no idea what the Aboriginals make of this…
More Snaps to come!
Got a question? Try asking here on the Board or drop me an email!
Cheers, Paul