Back in the days of tweed-wearing anglers, cane rods, gut leaders, and silk fly lines, casting dry flies to rising fish and swinging wet flies were pretty much the only ways to fly fish for trout, and swinging wets probably was the more common method. The 1952 edition of Ray Bergman’s classic Trout, first published in 1938, had 11 color plates of wet flies and only 4 of dries. However, fly fishing has changed considerably, and nymphing, using a variety of methods, from indicator nymphing to Euro nymphing, probably is the most common method today. Today, there is also a line and a rod for each specific fishing application. But thanks to developments in fly-rod technology, everything old is new again. Swinging wet flies as practiced by my grandfather is back in vogue, and the recent introduction of two-handed trout Spey rods is one reason fly fishers are embracing it.
For me, nothing is better than catching trout on top — the thrill of a visual take is hard to beat. But with modern trout Spey rods and techniques, the tried and true methods for swinging flies that the Zane Grey generation used are even more effective, and the takes are very aggressive. More often than not, fish are feeding subsurface, and swinging wet flies, especially the category of wet flies known as soft hackles, is my favorite way to trout fish when dries aren’t getting it done.
The Swing
The basic technique for swinging wet flies is the same as it ever was, regardless whether you’re using a single-handed fly rod, as Grey and Bergman did, or a modern trout Spey. Quarter a cast down and across the current, make an upstream mend or two if necessary to get the fly to sink, then allow the line to come tight and follow the swing with your rod tip as it arcs to a point below you. Continue to apply the occasional upstream mend if you are getting too much downstream bend in the middle of the fly line, but maintain tension in the line as much as possible. Do not be in a hurry to recast. Sometimes you will get a jolting take on the hang as the offering rises, emulating an emerging insect. Because there is no slack in the system, as there is in indicator nymphing, the takes can be very solid, and a hook set is usually unnecessary. I also have caught many fish as I am stripping the fly back in to recast. Traditionally, the weight of the wet-fly hook is what sinks the fly. If you need to get your offering a little deeper without adding weight, casting farther upcurrent will usually do the trick.
To get deeper than that, though, you need to add weight. If I’m fishing a floating line and a standard tapered trout leader with about two feet of tippet, I just add a split shot to the leader above the tippet knot. You want your offering to undulate in the current, and having about two feet of unweighted tippet allows the fly to do this. You can also use weighted poly leaders. These come in various sink rates. Once again, add about two feet of tippet to the poly leader. Or swing a Woolly Bugger with a soft hackle dropper. The bugger undulating in the current will put alluring action on the wet fly that cannot be duplicated by any other means, and the Woolly Bugger ups your odds of catching a fish. Often, the bugger will get the attention of the fish, which then goes for the wet fly.
Enter the Trout Spey
With poly leaders and Woolly Buggers, we’ve obviously entered the modern era of fly-fishing tackle and techniques. You can swing wets and soft hackles on the same kinds of single-handed trout rods in use 20, 50, or even 100 years ago, whether graphite, fiberglass, or cane, and have a great time, but the rods available these days have revolutionized the classic wetfly technique and created a new interest in the classic North Country style of wet fly, the soft hackle. Enter the trout Spey. Trout Spey rods are shorter and considerably lighter than conventional Spey rods, which on Scotland’s River Spey were up to 18 feet long and developed to wrestle with big Atlantic salmon. Today, any two-handed rod longer than 12 feet is considered a conventional Spey rod. In the United States, shorter two-handed rods developed over the last several decades, generally 10 to 12 feet in length, are known as trout Speys. Spey rods designed to also be casted with one hand are considered switch rods.
Compared with a single-handed rod, a two-handed rod’s weight rating is usually two to three weights higher. That means that a 3-weight trout Spey would be the equivalent of a 5/6-weight single-handed rod. In these terms, the weight range for a trout Spey rod is anything from a 1-weight to a 4-weight, but don’t let that confuse you. Just do the math.
My recommendation for most trout applications would be a 2-weight or 3weight trout Spey in a length from 10-1/2 feet to 11-1/2 feet. It’s critical to match the Spey line weight to the rod. The rod and line manufacturers have line-weight recommendations for each rod.
Line choice also means choosing between two different kinds of lines, depending on the kind of fishing to be done — Scandi lines and Skagit lines. Scandi lines are a little longer and generally lend themselves to situations where smaller flies are used and the swing targets the upper part of the water column — the classic wet-fly swing. Skagit lines are used when you need to get the fly down. They have a shorter head with a section of sinking line usually 10 to 15 feet in length attached to the end. Most often these sink tips are purchased as “MOW tips,” named for three notable steelhead guides, Mike McCune, Scott O’Donnell, and Ed Ward, and they range from a floater to various tungsten-core weight densities from T8 to T17 or higher, where the number is the grain weight per foot. For trout Spey Skagit lines, you will probably need only three MOW tips: full floating; half-and-half floating and sinking; and full sinking. For the latter, I would recommend a T8 that is no longer than 10 feet. Unless you are an accomplished Spey caster, casting anything heavier than a 10-foot T8 MOW on a light trout Spey rod is difficult. Also, in most cases, you are not trying to get your offering on the bottom, just deeper in the water column.
Spey Casting
Spey rods were developed to make Spey casts, because the River Spey didn’t have room for conventional back casts, and one of the advantages of Spey casting is that what is behind you is of no consequence, because no conventional back cast is required. You can actually make Spey casts with a single-handed rod and conventional fly line — Simon Gawesworth’s Single-Handed Spey Casting (Stackpole, 2010) will begin to tell you how — but Spey rods allow you to cast more efficiently and farther with less effort. You can produce longer casts with no false casting, so your fly is in the water more, and you don’t have to wade as far into the current to cover the same water. For an older guy like me, that is a big plus. This article is not about how to Spey cast. If you are new to Spey casting or have never done it, I strongly suggest that you consider some lessons. Learn to do it properly from the get-go so you are not practicing your mistakes. Contact your local fly shop to inquire about local clubs or instructors that offer Spey instruction. There are lots of YouTube videos, CDs, and books on Spey casting, as well. However, there is no substitute for personalized instruction from a qualified instructor.
Where to Swing for Trout
Pocket water and creeks are not swing venues. The ideal swing water is a medium to large river with runs and riffles. Larger tailouts in pools are good swing opportunities, as well. Whether you are using a one-handed or a two-handed rod, measure your casts so you are working each successive swing farther away from you to cover all of the water you can. You would be surprised how close fish are to where you are actually standing. Anywhere you find a riffle that shelves into a slot or channel is a go zone. If you swing your offering down and across the riffle and let it fall into the deeper slot, expect a ferocious grab. I am not saying this will happen every time, but when it does, it can be exhilarating. Positioning yourself on the inside of a curve and casting to the deeper cut bank or slot on the outside of the curve also provides prime opportunities to catch the alpha fish. If I find a cut bank on the outside of a curve — or anywhere, for that matter — I cast a little farther upcurrent and feed some line if necessary until the line can come tight close to or under the cut as the fly swings through.
Make sure you have your feet in the stirrups and your hands on the reins when you do this, because the fish that occupy these spots are the predators at the top of the aquatic food chain. I was f ishing the Tuolumne one time and was trying to bring to hand a small fish I had hooked. My fish was near a cut, and the next thing I saw was a 20-plusinch brown coming out from under the bank to have my fish for lunch. I landed my fish, found the biggest streamer I had with me, and swung it several times through the cut bank area from which that fish had emerged. I didn’t get any love, but the fish that lived under that cut by far was bigger than any fish I had ever seen or caught in that stretch of water.
In the absence of a slot or deeper channel, a riffle or run will harbor plenty of trout. Fish those areas thoroughly, again working your offering farther away from you with each successive cast. Swinging alongside current seams also can be productive. The fish will hold in the softer water and move into the faster current to intercept food. On a few occasions, I have let my fly swing through an eddy and found fish with their noses pointing downstream as the eddy current moves food up to them.
Tailouts are another place to look for fish when swinging. Cast into the current as it moves through the pool and let your offering swing down and through the tailout. Work each successive cast deeper into the tailout. Don’t ignore that channel on the far bank or the one below you on the near bank, either.
Flies
As my encounter with that big brown illustrates, you can swing all kinds of subsurface flies: streamers, including Woolly Buggers, as well as baitfish imitations, leech patterns, and some nymph patterns that produce movement such as Bird’s Nests. However, soft hackles are the perfect flies for swinging. All soft hackle flies have one common denominator: hackle fibers that pulse with the current. I am convinced that the hackle movement as the fly undulates and swings in the current attracts the interest of the fish.
Soft-hackle flies and wets have been around for a long time. Sylvester Nemes rediscovered them and introduced them to modern anglers in the United States in The Soft-Hackled Fly in 1975, but Robert L. Smith, in The North Country Fly: Yorkshire’s Soft Hackle Tradition, says, “In all probability, the earliest North Country patterns were imported to England by the Romans.”
These are simple, straight forward ties. There is no need to get fancy or precise with your imitation: a body, webby partridge or similar hackle material, and you are good to go. Classic soft hackles often were that simple, but adding a thorax acts as a collar that holds the hackle away from the body so it pulses better. I tie all of my soft hackles on dry-fly hooks, unweighted, believing it will enhance their action in the current.
There are many soft hackle patterns that are effective. In the sidebar, I have included instructions for my favorite. It’s purple. Purple has been used with much success for a long time — the Starling and Purple is a classic soft-hackle pattern — and is now back in style. I’ve updated it using today’s materials, following what we know about fish vision.
I asked a fisheries biologist why fish seem to like purple. Apparently the two colors in the color spectrum that fish can see from the greatest distance are purple and blue. By using one or both of these colors in your patterns you are showing your offering to more fish because of their increased visibility. I believe that the most important elements of any fly are shape, profile, and movement, but as a means to increase visibility, color can be important. That might explain why chartreuse and other colors that are not often seen in the naturals that fly patterns are trying to imitate nevertheless catch lots of fish. Anyway, whatever the reason, purple sure works for me.
Soft hackles flies are not difficult to tie, and swinging them is a fun, productive, and easy way to fish for trout. You will especially like those jolting takes. And you can add to the enjoyment and productivity with an investment in the modern equipment that makes Spey fishing for trout possible and by learning the classic Spey casts.

Purple Soft Hackle
Materials
Hook: Any dry-fly hook, size 14 to 16
Thread: Purple 8/0
Hackle: Hungarian partridge
Body: Purple and blue Krystal Flash twisted together. Purple thread or purple floss also work as body material.
Thorax: A mix of purple and peacock UV dubbing
Tying Instructions
Step 1: Select a strand of each color of Krystal Flash and tie them in along the top of the hook, back to a point above the barb. Twist the strands together and wind forward in touching turns, forming the body.
Step 2: Mix the UV dubbing together by hand or in a coffee grinder and dub a robust thorax, leaving room to attach and wind the hackle.
Step 3: Tie in the partridge feather by the tip. Begin by pinching the feather at the very tip, then grasp the barbules at the point where you are holding the tip of the feather and pull them to the rear to form a separation at the pinch point. Now clip off the tip of the feather just above the pinch point to form a small web triangle. With the tie-in point at the eye of the hook and the barbules facing away from you, peel the barbules off of the top of the shaft, leaving only the barbules on the bottom of the shaft.


Step 4. Make two or three wraps of the hackle, gently pulling the barbules back as you wrap forward. Tie off to form a neat head. The barbules should flare out from the body tight to the thorax collar. Whip finish and cement the head.