Buying a line for a two-handed rod is the most confusing purchase in fly fishing, and getting it wrong is not a minor inconvenience. A head far outside a rod's range does not cast badly. It does not cast at all, and the person holding it usually concludes they cannot spey cast.
This article exists so that does not happen to you.
What a spey setup is made of
Unlike a trout outfit, where the fly line is one continuous thing, a modern spey setup is assembled from parts.
Backing goes on first, as usual.
Then running line, which is thin and has almost no mass. It exists purely to be pulled out through the guides by the cast. It can be coated, which handles nicely in cold weather, or bare monofilament, which shoots further and tangles more.
Then the head. This is the piece that matters. It is a short, heavy section of line that loads the rod, and its weight is the number the whole system is built around.
Then a tip or a leader, depending on the system, and then the fly.
Because the head is a separate component, you can change it. One rod can fish a light head with a floating leader in summer and a heavy head with a sinking tip in winter, and it is genuinely a different tool in each case.
Understanding Spey Lines: Scandi and Skagit HeadsThe number that actually matters
Heads are sold by weight in grains, and this is the single most important specification in spey fishing.
Modern two-handed rods are marked with a recommended grain window, usually printed on the blank just above the grip. Many are marked with two windows, one for Skagit and one for Scandi, because the two systems load a rod differently and the correct weight is not the same.
That marking is the authority. Not a chart on a website, not what somebody at a shop remembers, and certainly not a number in an article, because grain windows vary by manufacturer, by model and from one year to the next.
Read what is written on your rod. Buy a head inside that window. If the rod is old or unmarked, the manufacturer will usually tell you, and a shop that sells that brand can look it up.
Almost every miserable first season with a two-handed rod traces back to skipping this step.
Skagit
An American system, developed on the Skagit River in Washington by steelhead anglers who needed to fish big flies on heavy sinking tips through cold winter water.
A Skagit head is short and heavy, with a blunt front end. All of its mass is concentrated in a compact length, which means it will pick up and turn over things that no other line will: a large weighted fly, a fifteen-foot section of dense tungsten tip, or both at once.
It is designed to be fished with an interchangeable sinking tip looped onto the front. The tip is the depth control, and the whole point of the system is that you can swap tips through the day as the water changes without touching anything else.
Skagit heads suit sustained anchor casts, which is exactly what a heavy tip demands, since a heavy tip will not stay airborne through a touch-and-go sweep.
The casting feel is blunt and forgiving. A Skagit head does not ask for elegance. It asks you to place a decent anchor, build a loop, and let a lot of mass do the work. It is much easier for a beginner to get a fishable cast out of a Skagit setup than a Scandi one, which is why most American instructors start winter steelheaders there.
Scandi
Short for Scandinavian, and it comes from Atlantic salmon fishing in Norway and Sweden, where the tradition is floating lines, smaller flies and a delicate presentation.
A Scandi head is longer than a Skagit and considerably lighter, with a long forward taper that comes to a fine point. It is designed to be fished with a long tapered leader, or at most a light polyleader, rather than a heavy tip.
Because the mass is distributed over a longer length and tapers gradually, it turns over smoothly and lands quietly. A Scandi head presents a fly far better than a Skagit does, which matters in low clear summer water where the fish can see everything.
Scandi heads suit touch-and-go casts, and they reward good technique in a way Skagit heads do not. A sloppy anchor that a Skagit would have carried anyway will simply fail with a Scandi, which is unhelpful for a beginner and excellent for anyone trying to improve.
Understanding the Difference Between Skagit and Scandi LinesChoosing between them
The rule of thumb is seasonal and it holds up well.
Winter, high cold water, big flies, deep presentation: Skagit, with sinking tips. You are trying to get a large fly down in front of fish that will not move far for it.
Summer, low clear water, small flies, near the surface: Scandi, with a long leader. You are trying to swim a small fly across a fish that can see it perfectly well and does not need it delivered with a splash.
Most serious steelhead anglers own both and change with the season. Somebody starting out, in winter, in the Pacific Northwest, should start with Skagit and not agonize about it.
There is also a third category worth knowing exists: long-belly and mid-belly integrated lines, where the head and running line are one continuous taper. They are the traditional approach, they cast beautifully in skilled hands, they require considerably more line control, and they are not where anyone should begin. Their advantage is that you can mend and control a long line at range without a junction knocking through the guides, which matters on classic Atlantic salmon water and matters much less on a Pacific steelhead river.
Tips, briefly
If you fish Skagit, tips are your depth control and it is worth understanding the vocabulary.
Dense tungsten-impregnated material is sold by how many grains each foot weighs, so the designations you see refer to grains per foot rather than to any measure of sink rate directly. Heavier per foot means faster sinking.
Tips come in fixed lengths, commonly around ten feet, and in kits that combine floating and sinking sections so you can pick a combination that gets down without dragging on the bottom.
Polyleaders and versileaders are the lighter equivalent, used with Scandi heads where a full sinking tip would be far too much.
The practical starting point is a small range of tips rather than one, because water depth and speed change from run to run and the tip is the variable you change most often through a day.
Running line
Less glamorous and it will still ruin your day if you get it wrong.
Coated running line is thicker, handles well in the cold, tangles less and shoots slightly less far. Monofilament shooting line is thinner, shoots further, and tangles enthusiastically, particularly in cold weather when it develops memory.
For a beginner, coated. The extra few feet of distance from mono is not worth the time spent picking knots out of it with cold hands in fading light.
Either way, a stripping basket or careful line management matters, because a spey cast shoots a lot of line and running line loose in the current will stop the cast dead.
How to tell what you already own
A common situation: somebody inherits or buys a used two-handed outfit and has no idea what is on the reel. Here is how to work it out.
Look at where the thick part ends. If there is a distinct junction, usually a loop, between a short heavy section and a thin one, you have a shooting head system. If the line tapers continuously from thick to thin over thirty or forty feet with no junction, you have an integrated long or mid belly line.
If it is a head, measure it. Pull it off and lay it out. A head that is short and stops bluntly is almost certainly Skagit. One that is noticeably longer and comes to a fine point over several feet is Scandi.
Most heads have their grain weight printed on them near the back loop. If yours does, that is your answer and you can compare it directly to the rod's window.
If nothing is printed anywhere, a shop can weigh it on a grain scale in about a minute, and that is worth doing before you conclude that a rod casts badly.
Balance, and the thing that is not the line
One more failure mode worth naming because it gets blamed on lines.
A two-handed outfit has to balance. A very light reel on a long rod leaves all the weight out in front of your hands, and the rod feels tip-heavy and tiring over a day of casting. Reels for spey rods are heavier than trout reels partly for capacity and partly for exactly this reason.
The check is simple: with the line strung up, balance the assembled outfit on one finger. It should sit at or just in front of your upper hand. If it noses down hard, a heavier reel will make the rod feel like a different tool.
Related: line memory is worse on spey gear than anywhere else, because heads sit coiled on a reel between trips and running line is thin. Stretch everything at the start of the day. A running line that comes off the reel in springs will cost you twenty feet on every cast, and it looks exactly like a casting fault.
Trout spey
The lighter end of all this, using shorter two-handed rods in the equivalent of three to five weights, and both systems scale down.
It is worth mentioning here because trout spey is the best way to learn the whole discipline. The gear is lighter, the casts are the same, the feedback is faster and you can fish it on water that would not justify a full-sized outfit. Many instructors now start people there regardless of what they eventually want to fish, which is the argument made in spey casts explained.
Where these systems get used
Skagit is a winter steelhead system first and foremost. Steelhead on Pacific Northwest rivers in cold water is the exact problem it was invented to solve, and it has since spread to Great Lakes tributaries and to coastal rivers everywhere.
It also does the job for chinook salmon and coho salmon where anglers swing flies for them, since those fisheries involve the same combination of big water, big flies and depth.
Scandi belongs to summer fish. Atlantic salmon fishing is its home water and where the whole approach was developed, and summer steelhead on low clear rivers is the American equivalent.
The gear
A rod with its grain window legible. If you cannot read it, find it out from the manufacturer before buying anything else.
One head inside that window, matched to the season you are about to fish. Not two systems at once while you are learning.
Coated running line, at least to start, in a color you can see.
A small range of tips if you are fishing Skagit, or a couple of tapered leaders and a light polyleader if you are fishing Scandi.
Loop-to-loop connections throughout, so heads and tips change in seconds on the water rather than requiring knots with cold hands.
A wallet or a spool system to keep tips organized, because a tangle of loose sinking tips in a jacket pocket is its own kind of misery.
And, if there is any doubt at all, a conversation with a shop that actually sells and fishes this gear. Spey line selection is the one area of fly fishing where asking somebody knowledgeable is worth more than an hour of reading, and where a wrong purchase is both expensive and discouraging.
The short version
A spey setup is backing, running line, a head, a tip or leader, and a fly. The head is what loads the rod and its weight in grains is the number everything depends on.
Read the grain window printed on your rod and buy inside it. That single step prevents most of the frustration people have with two-handed gear.
Skagit is short, heavy and blunt, American in origin, built for heavy sinking tips and big flies in cold winter water, and forgiving to cast. Scandi is longer, lighter and finely tapered, Scandinavian in origin, built for floating presentations with small flies in low summer water, and it demands better technique.
Winter and deep, Skagit. Summer and shallow, Scandi. Start with whichever matches the season you are about to fish, and buy the second one later.
If you take nothing else from this: when a two-handed rod will not cast, the overwhelming likelihood is that the head is wrong for it, not that you are. That is a fifty-dollar problem masquerading as a talent problem, and a great many people quit spey fishing over it without ever finding out.
