I went on an outing yesterday, to practice casting a new fly line that I had purchased. On my last fishing trip on the Yakima River, my guide, Ryan, suggested I try a new Rio line, their PowerSpey line. I use an 11 foot fly rod for my nymph fishing. I either use my 11 foot Sage XP or my 11 foot Sage Z-Axis, both in 6 weight. I don't spey fish, but the PowerSpey line wasn't designed just for spey fishing and that is why my guide recommended it. I talked with the owner of the Worley Bugger Fly Co. shop, Steve Worley, and he also highly recommended the line. In fact, for their style of spey fishing, they have pretty much started using just this line.

I checked out the Rio website and read up about the PowerSpey line. To borrow a quote from Rio: "The PowerSpey is for those casters that prefer a longer belly line. A unique taper design makes the PowerSpey an incredibly easy line to spey cast - at any length - and traditional anglers will love the longer head length for precise fly control and efficient casting." Longer head, you bet. I bought the 6/7 weight forward floating line, they designate it as a 6/7F (M7) line. It has a head that is 58 feet long, over half the total length of the fly line. For Spey casters, the grain weight is 480 grains on the 6/7 line.

I took off and drove to a little lake I have access to. I stood on the shore and started my practice casting. Now then, I did have a fly on the end of the leader, heck you never know, but unfortunately I only did practice casting and no practice catching. I cast using the traditional method of a one hand caster and not a spey cast. I was able to easily cast 60 feet of line. A fence behind me kept me from casting farther (yea I know, if I was spey casting I wouldn?t have that problem J. My roll cast was really sweet. I was easily able to roll cast 52 feet of line (not counting the leader) with just a flick of my wrist.

Later this month I am going to do some more nymphing on the Yakima River and I will definitely be casting with this line to really give it a workout.

By the way, here is a link to the Rio PowerSpey line.
http://www.rioproducts.com/product.php?recKey=135

Larry ---sagefisher---