Running Line

Rotate Your Rod – Shooting Line

August 1, 2011
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Last week we passed on a tip related to making longer spey casts with shooting heads – holding your loops in your top hand.  For those of you who like to huck, we’re following that up today with another tidbit that helps with easier casts at longer distances. This one comes from the world of [...]

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Pinch Loops in Your Top Hand

July 25, 2011
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Your fearless editor spent last week fishing two-handed rods for steelhead and chinook salmon at BC West on the Dean River.  We had a stellar group of folks at the lodge, including Michael White, Simms and Idylwilde rep for the Southern Rockies.  Whitey gave up another nice spey casting tip during the week, and we [...]

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Try Some Rubber Tape!

June 23, 2011
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At Alaska West and BC West, lots of our anglers fish spey rods.  Most of the time we’re spey casting, we’re using Skagit-style heads.  Skagit heads require running line between the head and the backing, and for easy casting and line handling, lots of folks prefer using mono running lines. One problem with mono running [...]

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Loops vs. Coils Demonstration

May 27, 2011
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Hopefully we sort out the ‘loops versus coils’ thing today! We’ve run a couple of posts in the past about holding your running line when you’re spey fishing, and one tip that we’ve mentioned is to hold loops, not coils of running line – two posts that mention the topic are this one with 3 [...]

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Running Line – Holding Loops

August 20, 2010
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If you’re making long casts with a spey rod and a Skagit-style line system, you need to deal with loops of running line.  Skagit heads are short but casts can be long, and shooting 50 feet or more of running line happens all the time.  Unfortunately you can’t just strip all that line in and [...]

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Running Line Roundup

July 10, 2009

Running line from above Photo: Cameron Miller As you’ve probably noticed, since we do a lot of spey fishing for king salmon and steelhead at Alaska West and BC West, we play around with spey tackle a lot. Our team and most of our guests use Skagit-style line systems most of the time, and these [...]

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Managing Running Line – 3 Simple Tips

June 23, 2009

Neat, tangle-free loops. Photo: Cameron Miller At Alaska West and BC West, we do a lot fishing with spey rods. There are a bunch of reasons that we like spey fishing – line control, less fatigue, the pure enjoyment of making a good cast, and the ability to cover a lot of water. Spey rods [...]

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