Put quite simply:- a spey cast is a
roll cast preceded by a bit of line
repositioning. There is nothing more
frightening to it than this. There are many
alternatives to the traditional single and
double spey casts. Most of which I cover
here, although it is quite possible to invent
your own variations, as we shall see.
Three circumstances commonly present
themselves where a spey cast, or one of it's
variations, is required:
First let us imagine we are
in a river situation, our line is on
the dangle (lying directly
downstream) and we want to roll cast
across the current. One requirement
of the roll cast is that there is
sufficient line in the D-loop; if we
were to simply lift the rod backwards
we wouldn't be able to form this D,
because the current is constantly
washing the line downstream: problem
1.
Problem 2 is that even if we
could get some line into the D-loop,
any remaining line on the water is
pointing in the wrong direction and
this doesn't help!
Problem 3 is that if the
wind is blowing upstream we are going
to end up either: hooking ourselves
(if we attempt forming a D-loop on
the downstream-side), or getting the
rod to cross over the line on the
forward stroke, tangling us (if we
try to put the D-loop on the
upstream-side).
Often spey casting is
regarded as purely a river cast, and
sometimes purely a double-handed rod
cast. This is pure fallacy:
Take the common stillwater
situation where we want to roll cast
our line with a change of direction:
if the caster wishes to cast his line
to the right of its current position,
he must roll cast of the left
shoulder - otherwise the rod crosses
over the line, if he wishes to the
left then he must place the D-loop to
the right shoulder. Ok, we've been
there and covered that, but what if
he cannot place the D-loop on this
chosen side because of an awkward
wind: you certainly don't want to put
the line between yourself and the
wind. So what you have to do is
relocate the line - if you can't cast
to the right-hand side of the line,
move the line; put it even further to
the right than you want to cast, and
then you can cast to the left of it's
new position. It's an exercise in
lateral thinking and its a spey cast.
When we are boat fishing, on
the drift, we often end up with the
line at 90 degrees to the direction
of the drift: the double-spey is the
obvious choice to get it back out in
front again.
There is a rule in spey casting,
which we can also apply to roll casting in
general, it is this: when casting across the
wind always,
always keep the fly downwind.