Trout Spey - Part One

What is Trout Spey?

What is Trout Spey? Trout Spey is the term coined for lighter weight spey rods designed for trout fishing tactics like swinging or nymphing. If you follow our fishing reports and other social media content, you will notice that we have been into fishing Trout Spey for awhile now and find it very useful for our area rivers. Trout Spey rods have been around for a number or seasons now, but not until recently were you able to get sub 5 weight sized rods. Over the last few seasons manufacturers like Winston, Sage, Echo, and others have built spey rods as light as 2 weight models. Now, you are probably thinking... what the hell would you do with a 2 weight Trout Spey? Well the truth of the matter is that it is not like your standard single-hand 2 weight rod. In fact these lightweight rods have considerably more power than their single-hand counterparts.

There are some obvious advantages to using Trout Spey on medium to large rivers like the Spokane or Clark Fork. In this first Trout Spey Video we discuss what Trout Spey is and how it can enhance your fishing experience. While this tool or technique may not be for everyone, it certainly has it's place in the world of fly fishing just like there are specialty rods for Czech nymphing, Tenkara, steelhead spey, etc. If you are into fly fishing on medium to larger rivers and like to swing flies or nymph, we feel that Trout Spey can be a fun technique to add to your repertoire of tactics.

What is Trout Spey?

Rods

• These 2-Handed "micro spey" rods are designed for trout fishing applications. Rods vary in length from 10'6" - 11'6" plus or minus a little. They range is sizes from 2-5weights, although 6wt could still be considered a large Trout Spey rod.

Advantages

• Cover water. Spey casting techniques allow you to cover more water, more efficiently. These rods have more power and capability to cast further.
  
  
• Cast while tight to the bank. Since spey casting requires virtually no backcast room, this allows anglers to fish and cover water in areas where the banks are brushy, steep, or lined with trees and rocks.
  
  
• Turnover large flies and sink-tips. When combined with certain styles of shooting heads or lines (skagit) Trout Spey rods make easy work of casting and turning over bigger flies and sink-tips. While there is a limit as to what can be done (caster abilities, type of line, size of rod), Trout Spey you will find is more efficient at casting these larger rigs.
  
  
• Casting in the wind. Trout Spey allows anglers to cast of either shoulder depending on wind direction. Additionally Trout Spey rods and more power to punch through the wind and turnover your flies.
  
  

Ideal Tactics

• Swinging soft hackles or streamers, stripping streamers, and nymphing. One could dry fly fish with a Trout Spey, but we find them to not be ideal, too clunky and not accurate.

Gear

• In this video I am using the following equipment. It is my go-to rig for the Spokane and many rivers around the region.

• Sage ONE Trout Spey 3110-4
• Hardy Marquis 7 Fly Reel
• OPST Command Head 225 gr
• OPST Lazar Line 35 lb
• OPST Command Tip Run 96 gr
• Rio Powerflex PLUS 1x Tippet
• Zirdle Bug Black and Brown (Custom Tied Silver Bow)