motts
Active member
Hey guys - after fishing streamers with the switch rod I built my wife this fall and loving it, I built myself one of the Proof 2/3 Trout Speys for swinging soft hackles/smallish speys in the spring/summer. I've had it out two times now just to play with it, but haven't been able to dial in the line/leader equation, so I was wondering if anyone else has this rod and can share what worked for them.
I using a 180gr Rage with both a 15' leader and 10' polyleader + tippet so far, as well as a cut down and welded old Rio Grand 5wt head plus leader. The rage plus leader left me mostly underwhelmed as it didn't seem to really load the rod up as well as I hoped, and casting distance suffered. If I timed everything properly and really focused on the bottom hand being in charge, I had casts in the 65' range, but they were not consistent and I was blowing a lot of anchors. I only tried a type 3 polyleader on it, which felt like too much for the rod to handle on the lift (just dead, couldn't really get the fly and tip up in the water column without really being aggressive on the lift), but it might be different with a floating or intermediate poly. The welded Rio Grand with leader felt like it was way too light (I really only put it together becasue I was getting rid of the line anyway).
I'm going to get some shorter polyleaders to try and will probably pick up a 210 rage. I'm also looking to get a 210-225gr skagit head to play around with and make some tips out of some other old lines I have laying around that aren't being used. The grain window for this rod is 150-220. I was trying a bunch of different casts to see what worked best (snap-t, double spey, single spey, snake roll), but nothing really felt "right" or gave me a starting point to make changes with purpose or direction. The snap-t was probably most consistent, followed by the snake roll. Flies were all around size 10, mostly unweighted, only a small beadhead if they were weighted.
Does anybody have any other combo they can recommend?
Thanks.
I using a 180gr Rage with both a 15' leader and 10' polyleader + tippet so far, as well as a cut down and welded old Rio Grand 5wt head plus leader. The rage plus leader left me mostly underwhelmed as it didn't seem to really load the rod up as well as I hoped, and casting distance suffered. If I timed everything properly and really focused on the bottom hand being in charge, I had casts in the 65' range, but they were not consistent and I was blowing a lot of anchors. I only tried a type 3 polyleader on it, which felt like too much for the rod to handle on the lift (just dead, couldn't really get the fly and tip up in the water column without really being aggressive on the lift), but it might be different with a floating or intermediate poly. The welded Rio Grand with leader felt like it was way too light (I really only put it together becasue I was getting rid of the line anyway).
I'm going to get some shorter polyleaders to try and will probably pick up a 210 rage. I'm also looking to get a 210-225gr skagit head to play around with and make some tips out of some other old lines I have laying around that aren't being used. The grain window for this rod is 150-220. I was trying a bunch of different casts to see what worked best (snap-t, double spey, single spey, snake roll), but nothing really felt "right" or gave me a starting point to make changes with purpose or direction. The snap-t was probably most consistent, followed by the snake roll. Flies were all around size 10, mostly unweighted, only a small beadhead if they were weighted.
Does anybody have any other combo they can recommend?
Thanks.