Single Hand Casting - Wind, Lift, the Sweep and Tap - The Single Spey

The Double Spey - The Snake Roll - Rod and Line Selection

Trout Casting.

Why and when do we use the casts?

It all boils down to safety, keeping the casting loop on all casts downwind of yourself, e.g., if you are stood on the left bank of a river and drew a line facing 90-degrees toward the far bank, and the wind was coming from the left of that line, it would be an upstream wind (blowing the loop to your right) in which case we would use a Single Spey/Circle, overhead cast off the right shoulder. If the wind was from your right the D-loop you have formed will need to be on the left-hand side of you, in which case we would use the Double-Spey, Snake roll or an overhead, again keeping the D-loop downwind of the caster.

The same rule applies for overhead casting, cast the fly-line over your downwind shoulder by either bringing the rod hand across your body (if the wind is coming from the right), or tilting the rod over your head and doing the normal cast with the rod hand.

It does not end there, we can also combinate cast to suit certain fishing applications e.g.; A roll cast into and overhead cast, to raise a sunken fly-line to the surface or when fishing a dry fly, getting the big angle change first with a suitable Spey-cast (to save endless overhead false cast), then before the line touches down on the delivery of the Spey-cast, going into the overhead backcast to dry the fly, then deliver as normal.

You may find yourself tight against tree's or a high bank, overhead casting is out of the question so we need to employ one of the Spey-cast. Also fishing heavy bug's where overhead casting would be out of control we can adapt some of the Spey-cast to suit.