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The key to catching fish when swinging while trout spey fishing is to stay tight. In other words, you don’t want a lot of slack in your line while swinging your fly. It’s virtually impossible to detect a grab with slack in your line.

The biggest challenge to staying tight while spey fishing is when you mend your line after a two-handed cast.  We mend to achieve proper depth and proper presentation. We must present the fly so that it settles towards the bottom and then rises up and swings across. Staying tight through that process is our tip of the week.  

Tip of the Week: To achieve staying tight through a mend, you will need to find the balance between giving a little slack so the fly can settle but not too much as not to miss a grab.  To accomplish a mend after your cast, you will need to first lift your rod, then bring your rod tip up stream and finally lower your rod tip. This will achieve the mend. Now the hard part… from here, you will need to follow your line with your rod tip at a pace that allows your fly to settle and yet is tight enough that you can detect a grab. You will have to practice this a bit to find that balance.  But... as they say, practice makes perfect ;-)

SUMMARY:  When swinging a fly with a two-hander, we need to try and stay in contact with our fly as much as we can.  This can be difficult when mending our line to achieve proper depth.  Work to find the balance between slack and contact so that you can properly present the fly and yet stay in contact enough to detect a grab.  

 We teach the above technique and many more in our Fishalong Courses.  Come join us in one of these to squash that learning curve.  This is just one of the hundred skills that you could gain by joining our University of Fly Fishing.  

UPCOMING COURSES TO HIGHLIGHT 

ENTIRE COURSE CALENDAR HERE 

 Trout Spey is the focus now but a Yakima River Fishalong will dial you in for Fall and Winter fishing.   ESN fishing will continue throughout Fall/Winter.

• November 17th       Trout Spey Fishalong 
• November 17th       Personal Water Craft Fishalong
• November 19th       Fly Fishing 301
• November 21st       ESN Intro / Fishalong
• November 24th       Trout Spey Fishalong
• November 28th       ESN Intro / Fishalong
• December 1st         Trout Spey Intro / Fishalong