This is the crew who was found down on the Guadalupe River on the Rio Raft river front flogging the water with spey rods. Under the tutelage of instructor Jay Clark, these spey casting workshop students learned to manage the winds and currents on the river using the Switch Cast, Double Spey, Snap C, Snake Roll and Single Spey. Once these skills were "mastered" on the right river, we waded across to the other side and learned to do them backwards. If that wasn't enough to challenge everyone, the Spey rods were switched for our single-handed rods and we learned that everything we learned could be done with a regular 9' rod. Jay also taught us lots of stuff about rod and line selection. For those folks who didn't have their own rods, reels and lines, Rajeff Sports provided the class with an assortment of Echo spey rods and Airflo lines.
I hope that we'll see some spey casters on the Texas rivers. I personally can see using mine on the Llano River.
A special thanks to Jay Clark for his excellent instruction and Harry Crofton for the great catering job.
We'll try to do this again next year. If you're interested in learning how to spey cast and would like to get on the list for next year, email me at mailto:dlemke@texasflyfishingschool.com
To learn more about fly fishing instruction in Texas visit our website: http://www.texasflyfishingschool.com
2 comments:
This was a great class
I have copies of both the Derek Brown and Mel Krieger videos that Jay mentioned in class. They were done years ago and although very well done they are a bit out of date. Rio puts out a 3 DVD set called "Rio's Modern Spey Casting" that includes many of the recent innovations coming out of the Pacific Northwest. Simon Gawesworth does most of the instruction and is excellent. Some of the other instructors are more difficult to follow, but that could just be my personal impression since they present material with which I (as a total beginner)have no familiarity with.
My suggestion to other beginners is to try to get hold of either the Derek Brown or Mel Krieger videos 1st and then move on to the Rio set later.
Spey Casting is a lot of fun and although it is not particularly useful in Texas (other than in the surf and from jetties)I would still recommend it. Spey casts can be done with single handed rods as well and I think that alone should convince fly casters to give it a try. But most importantly it's just plain FUN !!!
Ray
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