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Thinking about getting a 2 ft extension for my TiCr X 7 wt Lefty Kreh fly rod. Only instead of a spey rod, I' would be using it for pike & musky, so I'm thinking it should be easier to cast a large fly with the extension than without. Appreciate your thoughts on this, thanks!
Larry Dahlberg catches a lot of muskies on the fly, and he uses a plain ol' 9' 10wt.
Would not bother, unless you really want to play with a switch rod and learn to spey cast. Wrong tool for the task, in my mind.
To make it easier to cast a larger fly you need a heavier flyline. Switch and Spey rod are rated differently than single handed rods - they require heavier lines. An 8 wt switch line requires a significantly heavier line than an 8 wt single handed rod. So an 8wt switch line will be much heavier than a traditional line for a single handed rod 8 wt. So if you go to a switch rod and match it with the appropriate line you may find it easier to cast bigger flies farther.
However you can just use a heavier line on your single handed rod. The Rio Outbound Short and Scientific Anglers Titan Taper line are lines designed for longer distant casting of large and/heavy flies. These are integrated shooting taper lines with a heavy 30 ft head and a thin running line. The heads are about 2.5 line wts heavier than the first 30ft of a standard WF line. You make,the cast with a bit more than 30 ft of line outside the tip and shoot to the target. You are not overloading the rod since you are only making the cast with a bit more than 30ft of line out - which would be less weight than 45 ft of a standard line. They are very effective lines. These are what I use when I need to cast large wind resistant or heavy flies. You match the line to the rod based on the rating on the box. So you would for example use a 9wt Outbound Short with a 9 wt rod.
It would be a lit less costly to get an Outbound Short or Titan Taper than to get the extension and then match a suitable fly line.
I do know a couple,of anglers who use switch rods for casting large top water flies for stripers and bass. They are using two handed overhead casting techniques. Spey casting techniques are not required. Once learned two handed overhead casting may prove to require less effort than single handed techniques.
If you plan to throw big flies for pike and musky a 9' 9wt. is generally the small side for a rod, most fish 10 wts. I use a 9' 10-12 wt rod and a 7'6" 10 wt.
[QUOTE I do know a couple,of anglers who use switch rods for casting large top water flies for stripers and bass. They are using two handed overhead casting techniques. Spey casting techniques are not required. Once learned two handed overhead casting may prove to require less effort than single handed techniques.[/QUOTE]
This is what I was thinking, realizing that a 9 or 10 wt rod is recommended. My 9' 7 wt rod takes everything from panfish to bass, the extension coupled with the right line could make it possible to cast some larger flies for the toothed varieties and still have the switch rod setup for salmon if needed.