I’m not an expert on anything — except maybe postures of self-deprecation — so when an editor at a magazine I write for invited me to chime in with my two cents on the topic of fishing for trout with two-handed rods, the subject fashionably referred to as trout Spey, plus perhaps a couple of thoughts on the flies this fishing entails, I hesitated to offer a response.
What I know about fishing for trout with two-handed rods is that it’s a great way to swing wet or waking flies, especially on big rivers where casting distance can sometimes matter. Also, a long rod offers greater line control as you set up for and manipulate a downstream swing. These same attributes explain why Spey rods so quickly became the tool of choice once Pacific coast steelheaders began to get their hands on them. Few of us can make 100-foot casts with a single-handed rod, a shot made even more difficult with back casts blocked by trees or brush or whatever other obstacles line the bank behind us. Standing in water up to the top of your waders and then, hands overhead, hoping to double-haul and shoot an entire fly line is, for most of us, equivalent to a slam dunk in basketball — doable for some, no doubt, but a stunt not found in the repertoire for the rest of us.
Fortunately, most trout fishing occurs at more pedestrian distances. And even if we spot trout feeding near the horizon, we eventually discover that on most moving water, the dry fly is better fished close, where intervening currents aren’t so apt to disrupt the natural, dragfree drift of the cast.
Which brings me to my first objection against embracing, wholeheartedly, the trout Spey movement: I’ve never liked fishing dry flies with a two-hander, and I absolutely hate carrying two rods along river or stream.
And I do enjoy dry fly fishing, which I want to be prepared for at any moment I’m on the water.
I’ve often been quick to point out that the soft-hackled wet fly can prove the best way to fool trout poking their noses through the surface and feeding on floating caddisflies or mayfly duns. Yet even when fishing “wet,” I often present the fly on a drag-free drift, just as though it were a dry fly, an effective presentation that’s difficult, especially at short range, with a two-handed rod.
Short, accurate casts to rising fish with either a true dry fly or a soft-hackled wet fished like a dry can even be difficult with many modern, fast-action single-handers, which fail to load properly unless you have a fair length of fly line outside the rod tip. If you’ve ever fished beside a skilled bamboo rod aficionado while snooty fish are sipping right in front of you, you know how effectively he or she can aim and fire tight, deadly loops that unfold directly over a nose that’s nudged the surface only a rod’s length or two out in the current.
Of course, I’m oversimplifying all of this. And there are exceptions to every scenario I might devise. The vagaries of fly fishing are all but infinite, the reason, for many of us, it remains so appealing, no matter how long we’ve been at it. In the face of so much uncertainty, those countless variables we can’t even identify, much less control, we eventually learn that the key to success is rarely a matter of choosing the right fly or even the right answer, but instead, good trout anglers, especially, make choices they believe in and then direct their full attention, unencumbered by indecision, to making that choice work.
Which is actually one good argument for the two-handed trout rod: it doesn’t do everything. Carry a two-hander to the river for a day of trout fishing, and you’ve pretty much made your decision how you’re going to fish. Granted, there’s still plenty of room on that stage for experiments, creativity, even far-fetched improvisation, but in my fairly basic skill set, as it’s called, I generally prefer to rely on my trusty one-hander for the range of techniques I might need in a day’s trout fishing, whether nymphing, swinging wet flies or streamers, casting dry f lies to rising trout, or any and all techniques in between.
There are enough choices already. Two rods in hand, I’m suddenly pushed to the point of indecision, the surest state of mind for me, like most anglers, to fail.
Do I reject trout Spey, or whatever you want to call fishing for trout with twohanded rods? No, I don’t. In fact, let me make myself perfectly clear. In certain situations, on certain rivers, when fishing for certain fish, I love fishing the two-hander. It’s a great angling tool. It offers a host of delightful ways to cast that will come in handy even when you pick up your single-hander again. Yet those long, elegant loops you learn to throw across the wide, blue river are, truth be known, rarely the answer to catching more or bigger trout.
Again, the best trout anglers I know put little stock in a particular fly, a must have rod, or any other specific piece of equipment. It’s the carpenter, not the hammer — that sort of thing. If there is any infallible reason I can get behind for embracing trout fishing with two-handers, it’s that it’s a fun way to fish, simple as that.
What more need be said than that? he flies I like to cast when fishing for trout with a two-hander are generally traditional wet flies, most of them inspired by years of moving steelhead to the surface with swinging and often waking flies. Hence, the fun I just mentioned. With steelhead numbers throughout the West continuing their disconcerting decline, fishing for big-river trout with two-handers may be the closest some of us get anymore to the pleasures of employing traditional dryline techniques for summer steelhead. Right before Covid hit, I finished tying a bunch of simple surface patterns generally used for Atlantic salmon, a lineup I planned to try out the first week of spring fishing with John Gierach for big-river British Columbia rainbows. Then John phoned and said his doctor told him he wasn’t going anywhere, the first clue I got that the virus was serious.
My notions about swinging surface patterns for both trout and steelhead have often been inspired by caddisflies, especially the big October Caddis, which I always associate with fall f ishing for summer steelhead. Yet nearly all caddisfly hatches I know of invite the use of a swinging soft-hackled surface pattern, especially in the swift, bouncy currents we find so often throughout the West, the same kind of water that favors vibrant caddisfly hatches. In their pupa stage, most caddisflies are vigorous swimmers; as adults, many caddisflies also do a lot of swimming, at this stage rather clumsily, especially when depositing eggs back into the water.
What all these swimming caddisflies mean, of course, is that they are available to hungry trout; the swinging caddis pattern, we hope, mimics some of the real caddisfly’s vigor, eliciting emphatic reactions from fish. God, how I look forward to those grabs. With your line downstream, all but taut in the current, the strike passes immediately through rod and into hand and often starts the reel singing. With leader and fly line now dragging through the water, you feel every movement of the fish, if not its every emotion, an intimacy with wildness I needn’t belabor.
The Silver Sedge is a simple Irish pattern, one that translates nicely into summer sessions fishing over an evening caddis hatch, swinging wet flies downstream to rising fish. There’s no room to speak here about the subtle manipulations employed by soft-hackle aficionados — it’s enough to say that a long two-hander helps in lifting your line off the water and allows you to mend the cast easily, whether to slow down or speed up the swing. And on a big river, need I add, the two-hander can produce a most magnificent swinging arc, one that swims the fly through vast reaches of water, hunting or being hunted all the while as you await a jolt that vibrates all the way down to your knees.
Materials
Hook: Fulling Mill 5025 or similar, size 12 to 14
Thread: Gray
Rib: Small oval silver tinsel
Hackle: Light ginger hen hackle
Body: Silver fox underfur
Wing: Bronze mallard
Head hackle: Medium dun hen hackle
Tying Instructions
Step 1: Secure the hook in the vise and start the thread directly behind the hook eye. Choose a hen hackle feather with quills slightly longer than you would use for a dry fly. Strip the webby fibers from the stem. With the convex side of the feather facing you and pointed beyond the hook eye, secure the stem directly behind the eye; the feather should end up on edge, quills vertical, the stem in line with the hook shank.
Step 2: Continue winding the thread aft. About one-third of the way back from the hook eye, secure the tip of a short length of silver oval tinsel. Continue winding aft, covering the tinsel. At about the two-thirds point of the shank, secure the stem of a light ginger hen hackle feather with quills shorter than those on the forward hackle. Again, position the feather so that it ends up on edge, quills vertical.
Step 3: Carry the thread wraps back to the start of the hook bend. Form a dubbing loop and wax the legs of the loop. Lightly dab the silver fox underfur onto the loop thread. You don’t need much. Spin the loop to form a shaggy dubbing noodle. Now advance the thread to the original one-third point on the hook shank and wind the dubbing noodle forward, forming the body. End the body at the one-third point, leaving room for the wing and the forward hackle.
Step 4: Using hackle pliers, grab the tip of the aft hackle feather and palmer the body with evenly spaced wraps of hackle. Tie off the hackle, then lock it in place with three or four wraps of oval tinsel. Don’t worry if your body and palmered hackle and tinsel end up looking a little disheveled. That’s sort of the point of the traditional soft-hackle wet fly: rather than trying to mirror our image of the insects in question, these patterns offer fish a complexity of impressions as they swim at the end of the swinging line.
Step 5: Before creating the wing, trim the palmered hackle tips along the back of the fly; that helps the wing lie flatter and offer a denser profile. For the wing itself, align the quill tips of a fairly broad section of a bronze mallard feather. Cut or strip the feather quills from the stem. Keeping the tips aligned, tie in the wing of the fly just ahead of the forward end of the body, with the tip of the wing extending beyond the body of the fly and about even with the hook bend.
Step 6: For the forward hackle, use your hackle pliers to secure the tip of the feather you tied in for Step 1. Wind the hackle back to the wing, making a turn over the butts of the wing fibers. Catch the stem of hackle feather with a turn of thread and then advance the thread through the hackle and up to the eye of the hook. Form a tidy head, whip finish, and protect the thread wraps with lacquer or your favorite head cement. For an image of the completed Silver Sedge, refer to the opposite page.
