Trout Spey?

In my first couple years guiding for trout I did a lot of streamer trips. It was in high demand from a guiding standpoint and it was a great way to find a large brown trout. It also was a lot of WORK for clients to throw big flies and strip them non stop all day.

Because it was too much work for most people to rapidly strip sinking lines all day I found it was a great idea to break it up with a much easier and just as enjoyable option… swinging wet flies.

As someone who finds “the take” as the most exciting part of fishing, the wet fly bite fit the bill.

Back then it was all done with single hand rods, and often a split shot or two on the leader would help sink the fly.

Fast forward a few years and the invention of poly leaders made the casting much more enjoyable and the fishing even more effective. Poly Leaders are simply a tapered leader coated in tungsten.

Then fast forward a few more years and two handed 4 and 5 weight rods made it even more enjoyable, efficient and also gave clients an opportunity to improve their skills with Spey casting, which is our main gig during the steelhead run.

Eventually the percentage of streamer time vs swinging wet flies switched places for me so that now the vast majority of a day trout fishing in my boat has been geared toward Trout Spey and in general we’ll hit some of the good streamer spots at some point too.

I’ve found that most clients really enjoy the ratio change and it breaks the day up a little for all of us.

With Trout Spey becoming increasingly popular over the last decade, the rods and lines have improved greatly and are super enjoyable to cast.

Of course if there are dry fly opportunities we definitely take advantage of that, but on a typical day of trout fishing in my boat we’ll be swinging wet flies on the switch rods for a majority of the day enjoying a “tight line grab” from our trout friends.