Customer Reviews

Art of Spey Casting

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jeffrey Pill and his crew from Miracle Productions have been responsible for a handful of solid and exceptionally professional fly fishing videos over the past decade. Last spring they spent three days at San Francisco's Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club, filming the goings-on at the first annual Jimmy Green International Spey-O-Rama. This was a terrific event that didn't get the publicity it deserved, with the result that a score of the world's best casters from England, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Japan and the U.S., showed their stuff to an audience that should have been in the thousands rather than the mere hundreds.

The film crew's focus wasn't on the audience, however, but on the rare opportunity to film astonishing casters like Knut and Trond Syrstad, Andy Murray, Nobuo Nodera, Goran Andersson, Way Yin, Simon Gawesworth and Steve Choate, as they demonstrated and discussed spey casting techniques and applications. The fruits of the scores of hours of tape that Miracle Productions shot in San Francisco, augmented by footage taken elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad, have just been released in the form of a 3 1/2 hour DVD that sets a new standard for spey casting instructional films.

Spey casting, in case you've been behind the door for the past couple of years, is the term commonly applied to how a growing number of anglers are fly casting, mostly on steelhead and salmon rivers with long two handed fly rods but also with single handed rods, and for trout as well as for their anadramous cousins. As you might expect, a number of different styles of casting have developed out of different fisheries, each with it's own peculiar requirements for ideal rod action and line choice. The salmon rivers of the British Isles have given us long, slower action two-handed rods that facilitate repeated change of direction casts without retrieving any line between drifts. Swift, steep-banked Scandinavian salmon streams have produced a style that favors faster, somewhat shorter rods and a short, bottom-hand-dominant stroke for casting specialty shooting heads. And the snow-melt steelhead rivers of BC and the Washington, where steelhead lie deep in seams and pockets of softer current and prefer a heavy dead-drifted fly, were the birthplace of a third, uniquely American style, favoring strong tipped rods and lines with interchangeable tips in order to cast heavy, quick sinking flies from where they end up at the bottom of a swing to new positions well upstream and across.

The common denominator among these styles is in the way they achieve, without an overhead back cast, both distance and a change of direction between where the fly was when the cast was begun and where it finally lands. Call it spey casting, underhand casting, Skagit casting or anything else, and you're talking about a family of casts that has as much in common as it has differences. And it doesn't apply just to salmon and steelhead fishing, or to two-handed rods. An important subtext that runs through this DVD is that anglers who use single handed rods will be able to significantly increase their efficiency and productivity by learning and applying spey casting techniques to all river fly fishing. Next time you find yourself backed up against the trees with a fish rising 35 feet in front of you, or dealing with a downstream wind that plays bad jokes on your best back cast, or wishing you could keep your fly in the water more without a lot of false casting, you'll be very happy that you learned how to do a single or double spey, a snake roll, a circle-spey or a snap-T. Check out Chris King's demonstration on this DVD and see if he doesn't make a persuasive case for spey casts and the single-handed trout rod.

The DVD is narrated by Lani Waller, whose easy manner and laid back style keep things informal but focused. Simon Gawesworth (whose new book, Spey Casting, Stackpole 2005, is also worth a look if you're interested in learning spey techniques) provides useful introductory comments that help frame the content of the demonstrations.

Prior to each caster's demo, there's a brief interview in which Waller asks them the same questions about how they started spey casting and how anglers should go about learning spey techniques for both single and double handed rods. Sit through the entire three and a half hours in one sitting, which I suspect none but the most devout spey dweeb will do, and the format might get a bit repetitive and predictable. But treat The Art of Spey Casting as an anthology of demos instead of a narrative and you've got something else and I suspect that's no accident. The DVD format (no VHS tape is available) makes it possible to view or abandon a specific section by simply returning to a menu and using the remote to select what you want to see: Goran Andersson's Scandinavian "underhand" technique, for example, or Andy Murray's traditional long line spey casting, or Steve Choate's Skagit techniques. It's a nice way to link content to technology.

In addition to demonstrations and interviews, there are bonus sections on the Spey-O-Rama casting contest, the history of the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club, and some informative and frequently very funny scenes about the making of the DVD. There's also a section of interviews with representatives from the DVD's sponsors - Sage rods, Bauer Reels, Water Master Rafts and American Angler magazine. Commercials, in other words, just like on TV, though more informal and interesting, that you can view or ignore as you choose.

I'm generally not a big fan of fly fishing videos, but The Art of Spey Casting is one of those rare instances where great visuals, competent narration, and superior production values make a potentially complicated subject clear, accessible and fun to watch.

John C. Till, Fly Fishing Federation Master Certified Casting Instructor--this is a must have DVD for any person interested in fly fishing.
CASTING is the only skill that you cannot buy in the sport, you can hire a guide, buy files and equipment--but only the fisherperson can get the fly to the fish.

There are 3 ways to cast a single handed rod--the Roll Cast, the Overhead Cast and the Spey Cast. This video is a great learning tool for all 3 ways to cast a fly line. I recommend it to all of my students. This is the only video that a student needs--the video is great for students of all levels--from the beginner to the most expert caster. The DVD is almost 3 hours of material--what a super bargain for only $34.95.

The video contains step by step instruction by the best casters in the World and some of the best instructors in the World.

The DVD is not only instructional, but enjoyable to view.

As I watched this DVD for the first time, I was pretty sure that spey casting had no relevance to my fly fishing. After all, it's just for those guys using those big, heavy-duty two-handed rods, right? Wrong. The Art of Spey Casting will revolutionize how you think about single-handed casting. And it will make you want to spey cast.

The explanations of the underlying principles is clear and easy to understand. And the demonstrations--by some of the best casters in the world--are absolutely compelling. They will make you want to pick up your single-hand rod and spey cast.

As with all exceptional instructional DVD's you will want to come back to this time and time again. There is just too much to absorb in a single sitting. And it is organized and indexed so that you can quickly go to those sections you want to watch.

If you buy this video, you won't regret it.

This DVD has captured on film the best spey casting I've ever seen. The host, Lani Waller, is informative and is always a pleasure to listen to. For all flyfishermen, Chris King's demonstration is proof that single handed spey casting will become the fastest growing aspect of the sport. For instructors and advanced casters, the many different presentations from casters all over the world conveys new techniques and helps solidify the basic dynamics in the art of spey casting. For the beginner, Simon Gawesworth simplyfies the whole process with his easy to understand vocabulary and instruction. If you want to add a whole new arsenal to your flyfishing skills, this is a must see!

I'm just taking up spey casting and this is the best instruction I've seen yet. It's super great at teaching fundamentals, and the video immediately helped my casting. It definitely has applications to single handed fishing situations, and the video does a great job of demonstrating this point.

The beautiful cinematography of the casts by the experts defy both imagination, and in some cases, seemingly gravity. Exceptionally well done.

This opens my eyes and mind on this subject. For the first time SPEY Casting is explained in a very understandable way, a must have for evry serious spey cast angler (beginner and other included)

This DVD really covers all the Spey casting bases. The demos showing Spey techniques for single handed rods are especially good and very useful for small river fishing. Almost every cast and style is well covered from traditional to Scando. The bonus chapters are also well worth watching

This is an excellent video on Spey casting with an interesting "cast" of experts demonstrating their techniques. It even has a demonstration by the world champion in distance casting. Pretty incredible.

This DVD is an absolute must if you want to learn spey casting. I was interested in learning to cast with a single-handed rod in order to fish a local stream for steelhead, so the DVD was purchased for this purpose, which it fulfilled perfectly. However, the DVD has so much more useful information that I have watched it many times to pick up different aspects of the cast and I have used it to learn both single-handed and two-handed casting. I have found that using a two-handed rod makes fighting and landing large fish much easier. The other thing to note is the distance on some of the casts. The demonstrators, with very little effort, cast twice as far as I had been able to before, but, with the help of this show, I am getting better and better. It was enjoyable to watch and learn from all those experts from around the world.

This is very informative and covers a great deal of material - certainly worth buying. However, the 3 disc Gawesworth DVD is, I think, probably a better buy for the first time through. Most people who really want to get into this will probably want both, and also his book.

The 3 dvd set is Rio's Modern Spey Casting and does not usually show up first if you search for it with google.

A second point is that the general notions involved in spey casting are extremely helpful for the general flyfisher and can easily be incorporated into nearly any fishing venue or context.

Unfortunately, it can be a little difficult to get consistent and clear advice regarding the kind of line to purchase as the traditional 4, 5, 6, 7, etc weight system that is used to label rods and weight forward or double taper lines is not completely applicable. One is dealing with casting about 60 feet or more of line outside the tip top guide, whereas AFTMA weighs the first 30 feet. You can get guidance from your rod manufacturer, at least Sage gives it, or Rio and possible scientific anglers, but it tends sometimes to be a little contradictory or not "on point." FYI, there are 15 grains per gram and .035 avoirdupois ounces per gram. You do not want to overload your rod and break it, but if you do not have enough weight, you will not load the rod enough.