Spey Casts Explained: Why There Are Four of Them

A spey cast is a roll cast that changes direction. That is the entire concept, and if you already own a clean roll cast you have the two ideas that matter: an anchor gripping the water, and a D-loop behind the rod that acts as the back cast.

What confuses people is not the mechanics. It is that there appear to be a dozen named casts, taught in a vocabulary borrowed from nineteenth-century Scotland, with no obvious reason why you would want more than one.

There is a reason, and it is simple enough to state in a sentence.

Why there is more than one cast

Every spey cast has to put the anchor somewhere and build the D-loop on the opposite side from the target.

Which side that ends up on depends on which bank you are standing on, which direction the river runs, and which hand is on top of the grip. And on top of all that, the wind has an opinion, because a D-loop is a large amount of line hanging in the air beside you and wind will move it.

The invariant, the thing that is true regardless of any of those variables, is this: the anchor and the line must end up on your downwind side.

If the anchor is upwind of you, the wind blows the line and the fly across your body. With a size 2 tube fly and a fifteen-foot sink tip travelling at speed, that is a genuine injury risk rather than an inconvenience.

So the four main casts exist to give you a way to place the anchor on either side, from either shoulder, in either wind. You are not learning four techniques. You are learning one technique with four setups, and picking the setup that keeps the line away from your head.

Two families, which matters more than the names

Before the individual casts, the distinction that actually determines which you should be using.

Touch and go casts place the anchor and use it immediately. The line touches down, the sweep is continuous, and the forward stroke follows without pause. They are efficient, elegant and quick, and they work best with lighter lines, floating tips and smaller flies. Single spey and snake roll are the common ones.

Sustained anchor casts set the anchor down and leave it there while the D-loop is formed around it. The anchor has time to grip. They are less elegant, slightly slower, and considerably more reliable with heavy sink tips and large flies, because a heavy tip will not stay airborne through a touch-and-go sweep. Double spey, snap-T and circle spey belong here.

The practical translation: summer, floating line, small fly, touch and go. Winter, heavy tip, big fly, sustained anchor. Most steelhead anglers in the Pacific Northwest spend the winter making sustained anchor casts for exactly this reason.

Spey Casting: Choosing the Best Cast for the Conditions

The single spey

The touch-and-go cast, and the one most people learn first because it is the most efficient.

The line is hanging downstream at the end of a swing. You lift the rod, sweep it upstream in a smooth continuous arc that lifts the line off the water, let the anchor kiss down near you and slightly upstream, and come forward immediately as the D-loop forms behind you.

Everything happens in one flowing motion. There is no pause, and the anchor barely touches before the forward stroke uses it.

It is beautiful when it works and unforgiving when it does not, because the timing window is narrow and a heavy tip will drop rather than hang. It also requires the sweep to lift the line cleanly, which means it wants a floating line or a light tip.

How To Make A Single Spey Cast

The double spey

The sustained anchor workhorse, and probably the most useful cast for an American steelhead angler.

The line is hanging downstream. You draw it upstream a short way, then sweep it back downstream in a wide arc that lays the anchor down below you, then continue the sweep around and back upstream, forming the D-loop, and deliver.

It takes longer, involves two direction changes, and looks less graceful. What it gives you is an anchor that is sitting firmly on the water while the D-loop builds, which is exactly what a heavy sink tip requires.

If you learn only two casts, learn the single spey and the double spey. Between them they cover both wind directions and both banks, and everything else is a refinement.

The snap-T and the circle spey

Both solve the same problem: you want a sustained anchor, but the geometry of the double spey does not suit the situation.

In a snap-T, the rod flips sharply upstream and then snaps back, throwing the line upstream and dropping the anchor above you before you sweep and deliver. In a circle spey the same repositioning is done with a smooth circular motion rather than a snap.

They are the casts that get used most on heavy winter rigs where you need the anchor to land upstream and stay put. Many Pacific Northwest anglers use a snap-T more than anything else through the winter, and it is worth learning early rather than treating as advanced.

The snake roll

A touch and go cast made with a rounded, question-mark shaped movement of the rod tip that repositions the line and forms the D-loop in one continuous motion.

It is fast, it is efficient, and it changes direction easily, which makes it good when you are covering water quickly and the angle keeps changing. Like the single spey it prefers lighter tips.

The perry poke, which is a repair

Not really a cast on its own. A perry poke is a way to fix an anchor that has ended up in the wrong place, or to build a bigger D-loop when the first attempt was inadequate.

You dump the line in front of you in a controlled pile, then sweep and deliver from that. It buys you a fresh, well-placed anchor without having to strip in and start again, and it is what experienced casters use when a first attempt goes wrong in a way that would otherwise cost a whole cast.

Worth knowing early precisely because beginners produce bad anchors constantly.

The rules that apply to all of them

Four principles, and they matter more than remembering which cast is which.

The anchor goes about a rod length out, off to your casting side, with only the leader and a short length of line on the water. Too much line stuck to the surface and the rod cannot move it, which people call a blown anchor or a bloody L depending on where they learned.

The D-loop forms opposite the target. Whatever direction you intend to cast, the loop should hang roughly a hundred and eighty degrees away from it. If the anchor is in one place and the loop is in another and the target is somewhere else again, the cast will fail regardless of technique.

The sweep is slow then accelerating. Same as everything else in fly casting: build speed into a stop, do not start with it.

And stop high. A spey cast delivered with the rod driven low collapses the loop into the water.

What the cast is actually for

Worth stepping back, because the casting is in service of a way of fishing and the two are usually taught apart.

Swinging a fly means casting across and slightly downstream, letting the current carry the line into a curve, and allowing the fly to swim across the river under tension until it hangs directly below you. Then you take two or three steps downstream and do it again.

That is the entire method, and it explains everything about why the casting evolved the way it did.

You are covering water rather than targeting fish, so you need to make a great many casts over a long day, which is why the motion is designed to be low effort and repeatable rather than athletic. Two hands means your arms last.

You are standing in a river with a bank behind you, so there is no back cast available, which is why the anchor exists.

You are casting at a consistent angle and stepping down, so the cast has to be repeatable rather than adjustable, and once you find the angle you make the same cast dozens of times.

And the fly fishes on a tight line under tension for the whole swing, which is why takes on a swung fly are so violent and why the standard advice is to do nothing at all when one comes. The fish hooks itself against the tension. Lifting the rod pulls the fly away.

That last point is the one most people get wrong on their first steelhead. The correct response to a grab is to let the line come tight on its own, and it takes real discipline.

Learning it without wasting a season

Two pieces of advice from people who teach this for a living, both of which contradict the instinct.

Learn on a shorter rod. A trout spey or a switch rod, in a lighter line weight, gives you the same casts with faster feedback and far less fatigue. Faults are more obvious and correction is quicker. Many instructors now start people on trout spey regardless of what they eventually intend to fish.

And learn on a floating line before you go anywhere near a heavy sink tip. A tip masks what you did, because its mass will drag a mediocre anchor into place and produce something that looks like a cast. A floating line tells the truth immediately, which is unpleasant and much faster.

The corollary: practice on the water, not on grass. Spey casts load against water gripping an anchor, and grass does not grip. This is the one branch of fly casting that cannot be practiced in a park.

Safety, stated plainly

This is casting with a large fly and often a heavy sink tip, moving fast, in a river, frequently in cold water and awkward footing.

Keep the anchor downwind. Choose the cast and the shoulder that achieve that, and change casts when the wind changes rather than persisting.

Wear glasses, always. Wear a hat.

And if the wind and the bank conspire so that no comfortable cast keeps the line clear of you, cast off your other shoulder. Learning both sides is not an advanced skill in spey casting; it is the basic requirement, and it is why the four casts exist.

Where this is worth learning

Steelhead fishing on big western rivers is the American home of two-handed casting, and swinging flies for them is what most people mean by spey fishing in this country.

Great Lakes tributaries have adopted it heavily too, and the same casts work on smaller water with lighter rods.

Atlantic salmon fishing is where the whole thing came from, and the casts still carry the names of the Scottish rivers they were developed on.

And coho salmon and chinook salmon in coastal rivers get swung flies with the same gear, particularly where the runs are too large to cover with a single-handed rod.

The gear

A two-handed rod appropriate to the water. Long rods for big rivers, shorter switch and trout spey rods for smaller ones, and the honest advice is to cast several before buying because they differ enormously.

A line system matched to the rod and to the fishing. This is where most beginners go wrong and it is the subject of its own article.

Sink tips in a range of densities, if you fish winter water. The tip is the depth control and one tip is not enough.

A wading staff, because spey fishing means standing in big cold rivers, often in low light, at the end of a long swing.

A stripping basket or the discipline to manage running line, since a spey cast shoots a lot of line and running line in the current will stop it.

Polarized glasses and a brimmed hat, non-negotiable with a heavy fly moving at speed.

And a lesson. Spey casting is the area of fly fishing where instruction pays back fastest, because the movements are large, the faults are systematic, and an hour on the water with somebody who can see your anchor will save you a season.

The short version

A spey cast is a roll cast with a change of direction. The anchor and the D-loop do the same job they do in a roll cast.

There are four main casts because the anchor has to end up on your downwind side, and which cast achieves that depends on the bank, the current and the wind. Learn the single spey and the double spey first; between them they cover everything.

Touch and go casts for floating lines and small flies. Sustained anchor casts for heavy tips and big flies.

Anchor a rod length out, D-loop opposite the target, sweep slow then fast, stop high.

And cast off both shoulders. In spey fishing that is not an advanced skill, it is the entry requirement.